The independent Russian newspaper Meduza reports that “Putin had disappeared” when Wagner soldiers turned on Russia’s military leadership on Saturday. The private army was not far from Moscow when Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin agreed to a deal at the last minute. It was the President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who signed the agreement. It means that Prigozhin must go to Belarus and that no soldiers from the Wagner group will be prosecuted. Nor will Prigozhin himself be legally punished. This despite the fact that Putin will hardly forgive him for this, according to the newspaper Meduza, which has been designated as an “undesirable organisation” in his home country. In a brief address to the nation on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against treason. He said that Russia’s survival is threatened. Photo: AFP – The dagger in the back In the time before the agreement was concluded, President Putin himself called his former friend Prigozhin a “traitor” in a televised speech. – We are being stabbed in the back, said the Russian president. According to Meduza, Prigozhin should have tried to call Putin directly, but the president should not have wanted to talk to him. Prigozhin: We blockade Rostov and go to Moscow. At this point, Wagner’s soldiers were approaching the Oka River, where the Russian army had set up its first line of defense to defend Moscow. In addition to the president of Belarus, three other Russians are said to have participated in the negotiations with the Wagner boss. It must have been chief of staff in the Kremlin, Anton Vaino, former head of the FSB, now head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and Russia’s ambassador to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov. Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been a close ally of Vladimir Putin for a number of years, but after this Saturday things look very different. Photo: AP Unclear situation The situation is completely unclear, says Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Ap). – Nobody has seen Prigozhin. Nobody knows what this agreement, which Belarus has negotiated, actually entails. We do not know how the Wagner group will relate to the Russian authorities in the future. Both in Ukraine, but also in other parts of the world where they are present, says Huitfeldt and continues: – Their legitimacy has been based on the fact that they have a good relationship with Putin, and now their leader has been declared a traitor, she says. Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt emphasizes that the situation is still unclear. Photo: Snorre Tønset Because the war is going badly for Russia, internal tensions arise, says the foreign minister. – We have been warning against that for a long time. In the past it has been visible in the elite, but now this is visible to the entire Russian people. And of course there will be consequences, she says. – It is almost an internal competition to be as aggressive as possible in Ukraine. Wanted to take the defense minister Before the dramatic uprising on Saturday, Wagner boss Prigozhin particularly lashed out at the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Sjojgu was called a “coward” and a “creature” that had to be “stopped”, reports Meduza. Prigozhin’s goal was, among other things, to have the defense minister deposed. Facts about the Wagner Group * The Russian Wagner Group is a private military mercenary company. The group is based in southwestern Russia, near the annexed Crimean peninsula. * How many from the group have participated for Russia in the war in Ukraine is not known. Many of the group’s soldiers are recruited from Russian prisons. * The Wagner group has sent soldiers to a number of countries, including Syria, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique. * Mercenaries from Wagner are accused of war crimes in Syria, Libya and Mali. * The group was founded by the former GRU officer Dmitry Utkin and is led by the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin (62). * Prigozhin is sometimes referred to as Putin’s chef because he previously ran a catering company that delivered food to the Kremlin. * The EU and Great Britain have imposed sanctions on the Wagner group, and Prigozhin is wanted by the FBI. (NTB) Video from visit to Ukraine Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has not commented on the uprising himself. But yesterday he is said to have visited Russian soldiers in Ukraine, according to the state-run Russian news agency RIA. No independent sources have confirmed whether the video was actually filmed yesterday. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has not commented on the uprising on Saturday. Today, the Russian authorities published a video that will show him at the front in Ukraine yesterday. In the video, Shoigu is on a plane and then in a meeting room in a military facility in Ukraine. In that case, it will be his first public appearance since Wagner leader Prigozhin declared war on the military leadership. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu meets Russian soldiers in Ukraine today. It is the first time he has appeared in public since the Wagner uprising on Saturday. Photo: The Russian Ministry of Defense via AP / AP No one has seen the Wagner boss since Saturday evening either. Then he left the Russian city of Rostov to applause. – We are returning to the bases to avoid bloodshed, he said in an audio message on the app Telegram. No one has so far confirmed that he has arrived in Belarus, as was apparently the plan, according to CNN.
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Vladimir Putin did not participate in the negotiations during the Wagner uprising – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
