Russia To Drop Criminal Charges Against Wagner After Group Retreats From Moscow

Eko Hot Blog reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus, the Kremlin said Saturday, in a deal apparently brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that ends an armed insurrection, which marked the gravest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority in decades.

In a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an agreement was struck with Prigozhin.

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“You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally?” Peskov said. “The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus.” Peskov added that the Kremlin was unaware of the mercenary’s current whereabouts.

The Wagner boss had earlier turned his troops around “toward our field camps, in accordance with the plan.” Peskov said those troops would face no “legal action” for marching to Moscow, and Wagner fighters will sign contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

The announcement defuses a crisis that began when Wagner troops took control of a key military facility in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and some fighters advanced towards the capital.

Prigozhin has been publicly critical of Russia’s military leadership and their handling of the war in Ukraine – with few consequences. But he crossed numerous red lines with Putin over the weekend.

A somber-looking Russian president addressed the nation and called Wagner’s actions “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”

The president described events as an insurrection, which he vowed to defeat, and Moscow began to scale up its security measures.

But by Saturday evening, Prigozhin’s calculus appeared to have changed, and the mercenary said his troops, who were 124 miles (200 kilometers) from Moscow, were stopping their advance in order to avoid bloodshed.

Videos, authenticated and geolocated by CNN, also showed Prigozhin and Wagner forces withdrawing from their positions at Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don.

In the video, Prigozhin is seen sitting in the backseat of a vehicle. Crowds cheer and the vehicle comes to a stop as an individual approaches it and shakes Prigozhin’s hand.

Stunning escalation

Saturday’s dramatic events come off the back of Prigozhin’s very public and months-long feud with Russia’s military leadership. He has previously accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, of not giving his forces ammunition and was critical of their handling of the conflict, but has always defended the reasoning for the war.

On Friday, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing “a huge amount” of his fighters – a claim Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied and called an “informational provocation.”

The private military chief seemingly built influence with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.

But it appears that Prigozhin had turned not merely against the military leadership’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine, but also against the longtime Russian leader and his strategy.

On Friday, he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.

“There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It’s the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle,” he said on Telegram.

Wagner upped the gambit and went on to take control of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, a city that lies some 600 kilometers (372 miles) to the north of Rostov. Russia’s domestic intelligence service, FSB, opened a criminal case against Prighozhin for his threats, accusing him of calling for “an armed rebellion.”

Wagner troops were then reported to be moving towards the capital, prompting a major security operation in the Moscow region and a counter-terrorist regime being put in place, according to Russian.

Wagner alleged it controlled two Russian military facilities before deal was reached

Rostov-on-Don, a key operations base for Russia’s war in Ukraine, was purportedly seized by the Wagner group, as was a base in Voronezh, halfway between Rostov and Moscow.

“If you ask what kind of guarantee there is that Prigozhin will be able to leave for Belarus, this is the word of the President of Russia,” Peskov’s office said.

When asked what position Prigozhin would take in Belarus, Peskov said he “cannot answer the question.” Peskov said Lukashenko was able to draw on a personal relationship with Prigozhin to broker the deal.

“The fact is that Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has known Prigozhin personally for a long time, for about 20 years,” he said. “And it was his personal proposal, which was agreed with Putin. We are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts.”

Source: CNN

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