Who Averted Bloodbath In Russia, Making Wagner Chief Pull Back His Troops?

International

oi-Prakash KL

After much drama, Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) founder Yevgeny Prigozhin called off a rebellion against Russian military leadership, reached a deal with the Kremlin to go into exile and sounded the retreat.

It has been reported that the bloodbath was avoided due to the mediation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the Belarusian President volunteered as he has been acquainted with Prigozhin for about 20 years.

“You will likely ask me why precisely President Lukashenko [became the mediator]? The thing is that Alexander Grigoryevich has known Prigozhin personally for a long time, about 20 years, and this was his personal initiative which was coordinated with President Putin,” he said.

Putin’s press secretary stressed that June 24 was a “rather difficult day, literally filled with these tragic events.” “You know that as a result, it was possible to resolve this situation without further losses, without further escalating the level of tensions,” he said. “The two presidents, indeed, agreed on President Lukashenko providing mediating efforts on settling the situation [with the Wagner PMC]. We hold this readiness in high esteem,” the Kremlin official concluded, as per TASS News Agency.

If not nipped in the bud, the mutiny could have escalated into a civil war which Kremlin cannot afford to go all out against Prigozhin and Wagner after their victories in Ukraine, informed Russian watchers.

Scott Ritter suggests that Prigozhin was supposedly “turned” by MI6, who allegedly offered him significant rewards in exchange for becoming the Minister of Defence and initiating negotiations with Ukraine. However, these claims lacked any substantiated evidence and seemed aimed at undermining Russian morale. The intention was for Prigozhin to position himself as Russia’s savior, granting him unlimited authority to take whatever actions he deemed necessary to halt the ongoing conflict (likely by hastily striking a deal with the West), the informed Russia watchers say.

Earlier on Saturday, the head of the Wagner mercenary group said that he entered Russia and he was inside key military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.

“We are inside the (army) headquarters, it is 7:30 am (0430 GMT),” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video posted on Telegram. “Military sites in Rostov, including an aerodrome, are under control,” he added. This military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don serves as a key logistical base for its offensive in Ukraine.

Responding to the unexpected situation, Putin in a televised address to the nation said the “armed mutiny” by the Wagner Group is a “stab in the back”, and vowed to punish those who were on the “path of treason” or anyone who takes up arms against the Russian military.

According to Scott Ritter, Prigozhin had been ‘turned’ by MI6 which had promised him the highest reward if he could get himself appointed as Minister of Defence and start negotiations with Ukraine. There was no basis for those claims but the goal was to demoralise the Russians and proclaim himself the saviour of Russia with a blank cheque to do what he would deem fit to stop the war (presumably rush into a deal with the West), as per informed Russia watchers.

However, later in the day, the Wagner chief ordered his mercenaries to halt their march on Moscow and retreated to their field camps in Ukraine to avoid shedding Russian blood.

The announcement from Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to defuse a dramatically escalating crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s leadership in his more than two decades in power.