Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday thanked the military for preventing a “civil war” during the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group, a situation that he said did not require the transfer to Russia of soldiers deployed in Ukraine.
After demanding a moment of silence in memory of the Russian servicemen killed in the uprising, Putin paid tribute to army pilots killed by the mutineers while “honorably doing their duty”.
“Together with your comrades-in-arms, you opposed this unrest, the result of which would inevitably be chaos. In fact, you prevented civil war,” Putin declared.
The Russian president assured that not a single Russian soldier involved in the special military operation in Ukraine was transferred to Russia to stop the uprising.
“We did not have to withdraw combat units from the ‘special military operation’ zone,” he underlined.
According to Putin, neither the army nor the Russian population supported the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group.
“The people involved in the uprising saw that the army and the people were not on their side,” the Russian president said. before pointing out that the work of the security forces on Saturday “made it possible to prevent the extremely dangerous evolution of the situation”.
In a second speech, at a meeting of the security forces, Putin referred to the Russian pilots who died during the uprising of the Wagner group.
“Our comrades died defending the motherland,” the Russian president said, quoted by Sky News.
Putin added that Russia had “always respected” the mercenary group’s fighters for their “tremendous heroism”. He even added that Russia funded this force between May 2022 and last month.
The Russian president said the country paid a billion dollars (nearly a billion euros) to the Wagner group last year.
“Between May 2022 and May 2023, the state allocated 86.262 billion rubles in payments to the Wagner group,” Putin said at the meeting, which was attended by military commanders and broadcast on Russian television.
The Kremlin denies that Putin was weakened by Wagner’s uprising
At the same time, during the usual morning press conference, the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, denied that the Russian president was weakened by the failure of the Wagner group uprising, which created Russia’s worst crisis since Vladimir Putin came along. in power for more than 20 years.
“We disagree” with these analyses, he said, referring to “empty discussions” that have “nothing to do with reality”.
“These events showed the extent to which society is consolidating around the president,” Peskov said.
On Monday, Putin had already thanked those responsible for state security for the work done during the Wagner Group uprising, at the start of a meeting with the country’s top military and security leaders.
“I have come to this meeting to thank you for the work you have done in recent days and to discuss the situation,” Putin said at the start of the meeting, which was televised in a short clip.
This “working meeting” was attended by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, but not by Chief of Staff Valery Guerasimov, two declared enemies of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Wagner Group mercenaries staged a 24-hour armed uprising this weekend, led by Prigozhin, taking the city of Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, and advancing as far as 200 kilometers from Moscow.
The uprising ended with an agreement brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to the Kremlin, that Prigozhin be sent into exile in Belarus in exchange for immunity for himself and his mercenaries.
In a statement to the nation broadcast on television today, Putin suggested the mercenaries stay in Russia and join the army, or leave for Belarus.
Source: DN
