Putin accuses the West of wanting Russians “to kill each other” in Mutiny. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine and its Western allies on Monday of encouraging Russians to “kill each other” during a revolt by Wagner Group mercenaries, who stunned the country with an aborted march on Moscow over the weekend.
Putin said in his first address to the nation since the rebels withdrew that he had issued orders to avoid bloodshed and granted amnesty to the Wagner fighters, whose mutiny posed the most serious challenge to his two-decade rule.
“From the start of the events, on my orders steps were taken to avoid large-scale bloodshed,” Putin said in a televised address, thanking Russians for their “patriotism”.
“It was precisely this fratricide that Russia’s enemies wanted: both the neo-Nazis in Kyiv and their Western patrons and all sorts of national traitors. They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other,” Putin said.
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Putin also thanked his security officials for their work during the armed rebellion in a meeting that included Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, a main target of the mutiny.
“Civilian solidarity showed that any blackmail, any attempts to organize internal turmoil, is doomed to fail,” Putin said.
Putin accuses West of wanting Russians “to kill each other” in Mutiny. He added that Wagner fighters could choose whether to join the Russian army or leave for Belarus, or even return to their homes.
“Today you have the possibility to continue serving Russia by entering into a contract with the Ministry of defence or other law enforcement agencies or to return to your family and close ones… Whoever wants to can go to Belarus,” Putin said in his address.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had previously justified his failed mutiny as an attempt to save his mercenary outfit and expose the failures of Russia’s military leadership, rather than to challenge the Kremlin.
The rogue warlord’s first audio message since calling off his troops’ advance on Moscow was released as Russian officials attempted to portray a return to normalcy to the public.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said officials were “very closely” monitoring the unrest in the nuclear-armed country.
“We did have, and were able to have in real-time — through diplomatic channels — conversations with Russian officials about our concerns,” he said.
The State Department, on the other hand, stated that Ambassador Lynne Tracy in Moscow had contacted Russian officials “to reiterate what we said publicly — that this is an internal Russian affair in which the United States is not involved and will not be involved.”
Fighting continued in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces claimed new victories in their battle to evict Russian troops from the country’s east and south, but authorities in Moscow suspended their enhanced security regime.
Prigozhin, who did not reveal from where he was speaking, said in an online audio message that his revolt was intended to prevent his Wagner force from being dismantled, and bragged that the ease with which it had advanced on Moscow exposes “serious security problems”.
“We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country,” Prigozhin said, boasting that his men had “blocked all military infrastructure” including air bases along their route towards a point less than 200 kilometres (125 miles) from Moscow.
After mediation efforts from Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Prighozin called off the advance and pulled out of a military base his men had seized in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a nerve centre of the war in Ukraine, late on Saturday.
According to his unofficial Telegram channel Pul Pervogo, Lukashenko was scheduled to speak about the crisis soon.
According to Prigozhin, Lukashenko offered him a way to keep the Wagner outfit operational, which is a key component of Russia’s military machine in Ukraine as well as hotspots in Africa and the Middle East.
The extraordinary sequence of events on Saturday – according to Russian military bloggers, Wagner shot down six Russian helicopters and a command and control plane during their advance – has been dubbed “Russia’s most serious security crisis in decades.”
The Kremlin was at pains to emphasise that things had returned to normal.
Wagner’s Saint Petersburg headquarters said it was still open for business, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the company would continue to operate in Mali and the Central African Republic.
Moscow and the Voronezh region to the south of the capital lifted “anti-terrorist” emergency security measures imposed to protect the capital from rebel assault.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military leaders insisted that progress was being made in the country’s south and east, and President Volodymyr Zelensky made a morale-boosting visit to troops fighting Russian forces near the city of Bakhmut.
“We are driving the enemy out of its positions on the outskirts of Bakhmut,” said Eastern ground force commander Oleksandr Syrskyi. “Ukraine is regaining control of its territory.” We’re making progress.”
Four explosions rocked a residential district in the frontline town of Druzhkivka, near Bakhmut, also in Donetsk, according to Ukrainian residents.
The blasts severed water and sewage pipes, shattered windows, and threw up stones that hit yards and roofs, but no one was injured, according to municipal officials.
“It was a ‘fun’ night, we haven’t had this for a long time, it’s been quiet for a month or so,” said 66-year-old Lyubov, showing off the new hole in her cement-shingled roof.
