Putin spoke hours after Prigozhin denied that his march on the capital was a coup attempt and said he’d keep his mercenary company going despite official efforts to shut it down. The monitoring group Belarusian Hajun reported Tuesday that the mercenary chief’s business jet landed at Belarus’s Machulishchi military airbase, thoujgh it was not immediately clear if Prigozhin himself was aboard.
President Vladimir Putin condemned leaders of the Wagner mercenary group as traitors to Russia in a late-night speech to the nation, his first public comments since the weekend mutiny that posed the most serious threat to his nearly quarter-century rule.
“The organizers of the rebellion betrayed their country and their people, and betrayed those who were dragged into the crime,” Putin said, without mentioning Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin by name. “Their actions were criminal in nature, aimed at polarizing people and weakening the country.”
