The anti-terrorist operation will continue this Sunday in the Moscow region and the surrounding area, despite the fact that the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has announced an agreement halting the advance of his troops on the Russian capital.
Several police patrols were still positioned along the main road leading out of Moscow, in the south of the capital, a journalist from the AFP news agency noted today.
In the Moscow region, traffic restrictions were enforced this Sunday on the road connecting Moscow to Rostov – where Wagner group paramilitaries took control of the military headquarters on Saturday – according to a statement from the Avtodor agency, responsible for roads in Russia.
The National Counterterrorism Committee (NAK) on Saturday ordered an “anti-terrorist regime of operations” in and around Moscow, as well as in the Voronezh region bordering Ukraine, after Yevgeny Prigozhin announced the advance of his fighters towards the Russian capital.
This anti-terror regime gives the police more powers, namely to carry out operations. For example, important sections of the road between Rostov and Moscow were blocked and operations were carried out to verify identity and vehicles.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has decided that Monday will be a day off, given the “difficult” situation.
The head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on Saturday suspended movements of the uprising in Russia against the military command, less than 24 hours after occupying Rostov, a key city in the south of the country before the war in Ukraine .
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Saturday described the group’s action as an insurrection, saying it represented a “mortal threat” to the Russian state and treason, guaranteeing he would not let “civil war” happen.
At the end of the day on Saturday, when the advance of Wagner troops to about 200 kilometers from Moscow was reported, Prigozhin announced that he had negotiated an agreement with the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
Earlier, the head of the paramilitary group accused the Russian army of attacking its mercenary camps, causing “a very large number of casualties”, accusations that expose deep tensions within Moscow’s armed forces over the offensive in Ukraine.
Source: DN
