Putin’s grip questioned after revolt

MOSCOW—Wagner mercenaries headed back to their base on Sunday after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in neighbouring Belarus.

The agreement halted an extraordinary crisis -- a private army led by Putin’s former close ally Yevgeny Prigozhin trying to storm Moscow -but analysts said Wagner’s revolt had exposed Putin’s rule as more fragile than previously thought.

Security measures were still in place in Moscow on Sunday, though fewer police were visible, and passers-by said they were unconcerned, despite Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts remaining unclear.

“Of course, I was shaken at the beginning,” Ludmila Shmeleva, 70, told AFP while walking at Moscow’s Red Square.

“I was not expecting this.”

“We are fighting, and there is also an internal enemy who is stabbing you in the back, as President Putin said,” she said. “But we are walking around, re- laxing, we don’t feel any danger.”

Prigozhin was last seen late Saturday in an SUV leaving Rostov-on-Don, where his fighters had seized a military headquarters, to the cheers of some local people. Some shook his hand through the car window.

Trucks carrying armoured vehicles with fighters on them followed his car.

From assessing geolocated footage, Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said Wagner forces came as close as 330 kilometres from the Russian capital, while Prigozhin himself claimed that “in 24 hours we got 200 kilometres from Moscow”.

The mutiny was the culmination of his long-standing feud with the Russian military’s top brass over the conduct of the Russian operation in Ukraine.

Putin had on Saturday denounced the revolt as treason, vowing to punish the perpetrators. He accused them of pushing Russia to the brink of civil war.

Later the same day, however, he had accepted an agreement brokeredby Belarus to avert Moscow’s most serious security crisis in decades.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden discussed the revolt on Sunday, ahead of a NATO summit in Lithuania next month. AFP

MOSCOW—Russian state television on Monday broadcast footage of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu inspecting Russian troops, in his first public appearance since a failed mutiny by Wagner forces.

Shoigu -- the target of fierce criticism by the mercenary group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin -- went to a command post for Russian forces in Ukraine and held a meeting there with the leader of one of the units, according to images shown by the broadcaster.

During the meeting, the minister highlighted “great efficiency in the detection and destruction” of Ukraine’s weapons systems and soldiers, the ministry of defence said in a press release.

The footage shows Shoigu listening to a report being presented on the area’s military situation, studying maps and taking a helicopter ride to inspect Russian positions.

Wagner mercenaries headed back to their base on Sunday after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow Prigozhin to avoid treason charges and accept exile in neighbouring Belarus.

The agreement brought an end to an extraordinary crisis after the private army, led by Putin’s former close ally, tried to storm Moscow.

Prigozhin has repeatedly blamed Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, for his fighters’ deaths.

Prigozhin was last seen late Saturday in an SUV leaving Rostov-on-Don, where his fighters had seized a military headquarters, to the cheers of some local people. AFP