Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina
Their other options were to return to their families or sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, he said.
Putin’s speech came hours after Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin resurfaced in a video posted online, declaring that his motive on Saturday was to save the group from being subsumed by the Russian military — not to topple the Russian president.
In a tone both stern and conciliatory, Putin said that Wagner’s mutiny would have been crushed by Russian security forces if it had not halted its advance on Moscow, but also that the “vast majority” of Wagner fighters were patriots.
Delivered after 10 p.m. Moscow time, the address appeared to be an effort by Putin to reassert control over a shaken nation and to stem concerns that the mutiny had exposed deep flaws in Russia’s security. It also seemed designed to quiet critics of his move to drop insurgency charges against Prigozhin, with many hard-liners saying it was wrong to compromise with traitors.
“All the necessary decisions were immediately taken to neutralize the threat that had arisen,” Putin said. “An armed rebellion would have been suppressed in any case.”
Prigozhin said he ordered the rebellion after Russia’s military killed about 30 Wagner fighters in a missile strike on one of their camps. He accepted a deal, he said in an 11-minute audio address posted Monday on Telegram, to avoid prosecution and move to Belarus because Wagner could continue its operations there. He did not disclose his whereabouts or the location of his fighters.
Prigozhin’s brazen revolt confronted Putin with the fiercest challenge he has faced in more than 23 years as Russia’s supreme leader — calling into question the stability of a system where the rule of law is readily dispensable and oligarchs and officials jostle constantly for presidential favor, state benefits and influence. It also laid bare the bitter divisions over Putin’s handling of the war in Ukraine and could have serious repercussions on the battlefield.
The Ukrainian military on Monday claimed further progress in its counteroffensive to drive out occupying Russian forces. Ukraine said it took control of Rivnopil, the ninth village it has recaptured this month. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces have regained roughly 50 square miles in the country’s south since the start of the campaign.
Prigozhin said Wagner fighters strongly opposed signing contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry — as they were ordered to do by July 1 — because that would have effectively dismantled the group.
Though Prigozhin has claimed to have 25,000 fighters under his command, the figure is widely believed to be an exaggeration; British intelligence has reportedly put the true number closer to 8,000.
Prigozhin expressed regret about Russian aircrews killed by Wagner forces during Saturday’s rebellion, “but these assets were dropping bombs and delivering missile strikes,” he said.
Wagner shot down at least six helicopters and an Il-22 airborne command-post plane during the mutiny, according to open-source intelligence analysts, while Russian military bloggers reported that at least 13 air force personnel were killed. In his speech, Putin paid tribute to the servicemen who lost their lives Saturday.
Without naming Prigozhin, Putin made it clear that the man once called “Putin’s chef” because of his state catering contracts would never be forgiven, stating that “the organizers of the rebellion, betraying their country, their people, also betrayed those whom they lured into this crime.” Still, he said they would be allowed to depart for Belarus.
In a brash new claim Monday, Prigozhin said his forces “blocked and neutralized all military units and airfields that were on our way” without killing any Russian ground forces. Wagner fighters got within 125 miles of Moscow, he said, an achievement that “revealed the most serious security flaws across the country.”
While there was no way to immediately verify the claim, Western military analysts were surprised by Wagner’s swift advance toward the Russian capital after the group seized control of the Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov early Saturday.
In an apparent effort to explain how Wagner fighters managed to get so close to Moscow without facing effective resistance, Putin said he had ordered “that bloodshed be avoided.”
He said it was necessary to give Wagner fighters time to understand that “their actions are resolutely rejected by society, and to what tragic, destructive consequences for Russia, for our state, the adventure in which they were dragged would lead.”
“I thank those soldiers and commanders of the Wagner Group who made the only right decision. They did not follow through with fratricidal bloodshed. They stopped at the last line,” Putin said.
In another demonstration of control Monday, Putin called a meeting of his security chiefs, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a fierce opponent of Prigozhin who had not been seen since Saturday.
As a state of emergency in the Russian capital was lifted, Russians tried to make sense of why Putin would strike a deal with Prigozhin after accusing his former ally of “treason.” Globally, many observers were left wondering what it would mean in the near term for the war in Ukraine, and for Putin’s long-term political future.
With Putin allowing Wagner fighters to go to Belarus, and to operate legally under Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, it appeared the group would continue its operations in Africa and other parts of the world, leveraging security contracts and political influence operations in return for mining concessions and cash.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Wagner “instructors” would remain in Mali and the Central African Republic.
It appears that the group’s role in Ukraine may be over, however, and it will no longer have access to Russian state support.
Russian news outlet Verstka reported that a Wagner base for 8,000 soldiers was being constructed in Belarus, southeast of Minsk. While the report could not be independently confirmed, prominent Russian military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, who goes by Rybar on Telegram, said Monday evening that Wagner units had entered Belarus with weapons and other equipment.
Until his Telegram post, Prigozhin had not been heard from since leaving the southern city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday to cheers and shouts of support.
In Putin’s address Monday, perhaps in response to those scenes, he insisted that the whole of Russia was behind him.
“Everyone was united and banded together by the main thing — the sense of responsibility for the fate of the fatherland,” he said.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin called Monday for moves to strengthen Russian unity, but he insisted that the government had worked “smoothly and clearly” during the crisis.
“It is important to ensure the sovereignty of the Russian Federation and the security of citizens, taking into account recent events,” Mishustin said at a meeting of deputy prime ministers. “It is necessary to consolidate society against the backdrop of an attempted armed rebellion.”
Lavrov said the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, spoke with Russian government representatives Sunday and conveyed Washington’s view that the events were an “internal affair” and its hope that Russian nuclear weapons remained secure.
“I think it’s important to remember that Mr. Putin still commands a very large and a very capable military. And the bulk of that military is across the border in Ukraine,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday.
But news coverage in Russia revealed how deeply the events have rattled Putin’s authoritarian state.
An opinion column in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said that the “most terrifying scenario” — of fighting in the streets of Moscow and a split in Russia’s military and security forces — had been averted.
“Russia displayed its vulnerability to the whole world and to itself. Russia dashed to the abyss at full speed and with the same speed stepped back from it,” the columnist, Mikhail Rostovsky, wrote under the headline “Prigozhin Leaves, Problems Remain: Deep Political Consequences of a Failed Coup.”
There were signs of a potential crackdown on Russian private military companies, with widespread calls to bring them to heel, even though they are already technically illegal in Russia.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, carried out raids Saturday at the addresses of current and former Wagner mercenaries, Russian media outlet Important Stories reported.
Yet Wagner’s recruiting offices in Novosibirsk and Tyumen have reopened, according to the state-controlled Tass news agency, and the group’s office in St. Petersburg was also working as normal. Wagner is seen by many in Russia as a more prestigious, elite and effective force than the Russian military.
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, told the Vedomosti newspaper that there was no need to ban Wagner, which he called the country’s most combat-ready force.
Kartapolov said Wagner fighters could continue to serve in the war in Ukraine if they signed contracts with the military. Such a path is likely to be unpalatable to most Wagner fighters, who are intensely loyal to Prigozhin. And it was their initial refusal to sign the contracts that helped give rise to the mutiny.
Another newspaper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, called Sunday for all armed formations not officially part of the security structures to be disarmed, given “today’s political reality.”
“It became clear that a man with a gun, if he is not a state official, is a real threat to the state and statehood,” the newspaper’s editor, Konstantin Remchukov, wrote in an opinion column. “In Russia there should not be armed people who are loyal first to their commanders and only secondarily to someone else.”
Social media pages connected to Wagner, Prigozhin and key figures associated with him were blocked on Saturday. By Sunday, many pro-Kremlin Telegram channels were rushing to discredit the Wagner leader. In St. Petersburg, local media published photographs of gold bars, fake passports, millions in cash and “white powder” reportedly seized from his properties by authorities.
Alexander Khodakovsky, head of the pro-Moscow Vostok Battalion, which is fighting in eastern Ukraine, published a story claiming that Prigozhin had one of his underlings beaten “half to death” after the subordinate told the mercenary leader that it would be impossible to meet recruiting quotas for Russian prisoners.
“This incident told me everything: I made an approximate psycho-portrait of Prigozhin, and I began to warn everyone of the growing threat,” Khodakovsky wrote. “It was clear to me that a person with such manners serves only his own interests,” he added.
David L. Stern in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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