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.”
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.
Putin’s comments were the first since a TV address early Saturday when he threatened “harsh” punishment that never transpired. He said little to clarify the mystery around the weekend’s events or the fate of Prigozhin, who the Kremlin said had agreed to go to Belarus and avoid prosecution as part of the deal to pull his forces from the capital.
“The only news from Putin’s speech is that Prigozhin was allowed to go to Belarus not alone, but with his comrades,” Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik, a political consultant, wrote in a Telegram post. “That will be a separate intrigue.”
The rapid chain of events has left the US, Europe and China puzzling over the political fallout from a rebellion that shattered Putin’s invincible image as Russia’s leader and spiraled into the greatest threat to his nearly quarter-century rule. The crisis highlighted bitter divisions within Russia over the faltering war in Ukraine that’s the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, as a Ukrainian counteroffensive continues to try to push Putin’s forces out of occupied territories.
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While excoriating Wagner’s leaders, Putin said the group’s fighters were patriots who’d been used without their knowledge. He said they could join the regular military, go home or relocate to Belarus. “The promise I made will be fulfilled,” he said.
It wasn’t clear what that meant for Prigozhin himself, however. State media reported earlier Monday that the criminal case against him opened at the start of the crisis still hasn’t been closed.
Prigozhin has accused the Defense Ministry of seeking to destroy Wagner with an order requiring his fighters sign up with the military by July 1. He said Monday that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who negotiated to end the revolt, had offered to allow Wagner to continue operating in his country.
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Belarus may turn out to be a “trap,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. Lukashenko, who is economically and politically beholden to Putin, has shown he is capable of turning over Wagner personnel at Moscow’s request, analysts at wrote.
Putin’s speech showed the Kremlin is moving ahead with the plan to integrate Wagner forces and will still need them for the war in Ukraine, as well as other international operations, according to the Washington-based institute.
The president showed support for his close ally, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is the main target of Prigozhin’s attacks over the handling of the war against Ukraine. Just after his speech, Putin met with Shoigu and heads of the Interior Ministry, the Federal Security Service, the Russian National Guard and the Investigative Committee, thanking them for their work in a 30-second clip broadcast on state television.
Prigozhin continued his criticism of top security officials on Monday. In an 11-minute audio message on his press service’s Telegram channel, he said the lightening progress of his fighters toward the capital, blockading military units along the way without significant resistance, highlighted “serious problems with security on the whole territory of the country.”
The mercenary chief said the march on Moscow by Wagner troops to within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of the capital on Saturday was a protest aimed at bringing to account those responsible for “enormous mistakes” in Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as to prevent the “destruction” of his private army by officials.
“We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legitimately elected government,” he said, stopping short of openly pledging his loyalty to Putin.
In his audio message on Monday, the mercenary chief pointedly noted the expressions of public support he said his fighters enjoyed as they marched through Russia’s heartland.
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“Though he retreated, Prigozhin is now a figure of a totally different scale,” Stanovaya wrote. “Putin will have to do something about this, balancing the risks of a potentially negative reaction from his followers and those who support him.”
US President Joe Biden said it was still too early to determine the impact of the revolt.
“We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine. It is still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where it is going,” he said in his first public remarks on the mutiny, during a White House event on Monday.
There’s “an internal power struggle in Russia and we will not get involved,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told reporters Monday as European Union foreign ministers gathered for a scheduled meeting in Luxembourg. “We are seeing that Russia’s leadership is increasingly fighting within itself.”
