Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, has visited troops on the frontline in his first public appearance since the Wagner Group attempted to overthrow him.
In a video released on Monday morning by the Russian Defence Ministry, Shoigu was shown flying in a helicopter with a colleague and then attending a meeting with military officers at the headquarters of a military headquarters in Ukraine
It was not immediately clear where or when the visit had taken place.
Russia’s Zvezda Defence Ministry TV Channel said Shoigu, who looked physically unharmed and calm, had listened to a report by Colonel General Yevgeny Nikiforov, the group’s commander, about the current situation on the frontlines in Ukraine.
The video showed Shoigu for the first time since Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin declared a “march of justice” late Friday to oust the defense minister, during which the mercenaries captured the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then marched on Moscow.
Meanwhile, Moscow lifted an “anti-terrorist” security regime it had imposed over the weekend when mutinous Wagner mercenaries threatened to storm the city.
By Holly Honderich in Washington DC & Callum May & Jemma Crew in London
BBC News
Stockton Rush wanted to be known as an innovator. It didn't seem to matter how he did it.
Bright, driven, born into wealth, his dream was to be the first person to reach Mars.
When he realised that was unlikely to happen in his lifetime, he turned his attentions to the sea.
"I wanted to be Captain Kirk and in our lifetime, the final frontier is the ocean," he told a journalist in 2017.
The ocean promised adventure, adrenaline and mystery. He also believed it promised profits - if he could make a success of the submersible he helped design, which he directed his company OceanGate to build.
He had a maverick spirit that seemed to draw people in, earning him the admiration of his employees, passengers and investors.
"His passion was amazing and I bought into it," said Aaron Newman, who travelled on Mr Rush's Titan sub and eventually became an OceanGate investor.
But Mr Rush's soaring ambition also drew scrutiny from industry experts who warned he was cutting corners, putting innovation ahead of safety and risking potentially catastrophic results.
It wasn't something he was willing to accept.
Last week, he and four other people on board the Titan lost their lives when it imploded.
"You're remembered for the rules you break," Mr Rush once said, quoting US general Douglas MacArthur.
"I've broken some rules," he said about the Titan. "I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me."
Reuters
Stockton Rush III was born in California in 1962 into a family that made its fortune from oil and shipping.
He was sent to a prestigious boarding school, the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 1984.
At 19, he became the youngest pilot in the world to qualify for jet transport rating, the highest pilot rating obtainable. He worked on F-15s and anti-satellite missile programmes, with the hope of eventually joining the US space programme and being an astronaut.
But eventually that ambition lost its appeal, as a trip to the Red Planet seemed increasingly out of reach.
"If someone would tell me what the commercial or military reason to go to Mars is, I would believe it's going to happen," Mr Rush told Fast Company magazine. "It's just a dream."
So he shifted his gaze downward and in 2009 founded OceanGate, a private company that offered customers - Mr Rush preferred the term "adventurers" - a chance to experience deep sea travel, including to the wreck of the Titanic.
The company, based in Everett in Washington state, was small and tight-knit. Rush would chair all-staff meetings at its headquarters, while his wife Wendy - another member of Princeton's class of 1984 - was his director of communications.
A junior employee who worked at OceanGate from 2017 to 2018, and asked not to be identified, said the company headquarters felt homey and lived-in, with wiring and equipment seemingly everywhere. "It was very free-flowing."
At the helm was Mr Rush.
"He was just really passionate about what he was doing and very good at instilling that passion into everybody else that worked there," the employee told the BBC.
At one staff meeting, Mr Rush brought virtual reality goggles for everyone to take a digital underwater tour. Mr Rush told them that this is what they were aiming for - to allow more people to have this view. "This is the world I want," he told them.
Mr Rush was "not a leader from the back, telling people what to do - he led from the front", said Mr Newman, the investor.
Mr Newman went on the Titan with Mr Rush to see the wreck of the Titanic in the summer of 2021.
The first time they met, Mr Rush "spent hours" talking with him about the potential of exploring the bottom of the ocean.
Mr Rush "followed his own path", Mr Newman said.
Mr Newman's recollection of OceanGate was of a team that looked out for each other.
And Mr Rush's wife, Wendy, was "up at the top, looking over his shoulder, making sure that he was doing everything perfectly and not cutting corners or skipping things", he said.
Mr Newman was so taken by Mr Rush that he decided to invest in OceanGate. "You know, I didn't know if I'd ever see any return or not. That was not the point," he said.
"The point was to be part of something that's experimental and is breaking new ground, and pushing forward our technology, and how the world works, and going places and doing amazing things, that's what this is about."
Mr Newman described himself as a minor investor. As a private company, OceanGate is not obliged to publish all financial records. US financial records from January 2020 show that Mr Rush and his fellow directors sold a stake in the company worth $18m, thought to have been used to fund the development of Titan.
To recoup the costs, OceanGate's sub, "well-lit and comfortable," the company said, came with a price tag of $250,000 (£195,600) for a underwater trip.
Mr Rush's clients were uber-rich thrill seekers, willing to part with that sum for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Las Vegas businessman Jay Bloom had been messaging Mr Rush about joining a dive, before finally turning down a seat for himself and his son on the fatal excursion.
He said the chance to see the wreck up close would have been a "bucket-list" experience. It was about being able to say "you did something very few people have the opportunity to do", he said.
Despite the large sums of money involved, OceanGate equipment sometimes had a home-made feel.
The former junior employee told the BBC he was surprised to find that Titan's electrical design included off-the-shelf development boards, as opposed to using a custom, in-house design like other engineering companies.
David Pogue, a CBS News journalist who joined Mr Rush on a trip to the Titanic wreck in 2021, said the chief executive drove the Titan with a game controller and used "rusty lead pipes from the construction industry as ballast".
Yet Mr Rush assured Mr Pogue that only thing that really mattered was the vessel's hull, built from an unusual and largely untested material for a deep sea vessel: carbon fibre, with titanium end plates.
Mr Rush knew carbon fibre was used successfully in yachts and aviation, and believed it would allow for his submersible to made more cheaply than industry-standard steels ones.
"There's a rule you don't do that," said Mr Rush in 2021. "Well, I did."
The tube shape of the Titan was also unusual. The hull of a deep-diving sub is usually spherical, which means it receives an equal amount of pressure at every point, but the Titan had a cylinder-shaped cabin. OceanGate gave it sensors to analyse the effects of changing pressure as it descended.
The glass viewport, from which passengers could see out, was only certified down to 1,300m, far short of the depths of the ocean floor where the Titantic wreck lay.
Rob McCallum, an explorer who acted as a consultant for OceanGate, became concerned when Mr Rush decided against getting official certification for the submersible.
Subs can be certified or "classed" by marine organisations, like the American Bureau of Shipping or Lloyd's Register, meaning the vehicle must meet certain standards on things like stability, strength, safety and performance. But this process is not mandatory.
In emails to Mr Rush in March 2018, seen by BBC News, Mr McCallum said: "You are wanting to use a prototype un-classed technology in a very hostile place. As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk.
"4,000m down in the mid-Atlantic is not the kind of place you can cut corners."
Mr Rush, apparently indignant, responded that he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation".
Safety was "about culture, not paperwork", he said. He talked of needing "sensible design, extensive testing, and informed consent of the participants", but said a piece of paper did not guarantee the safety of a sub.
While he admitted deviating from some guidelines, such as "overly conservative" viewport limits, he argued the Titan's safety systems were "way beyond" anything else in use.
He wrote: "I know that our engineering focused, innovative approach (as opposed to an existing standards compliance-focused design process) flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation."
The tense exchange ended after OceanGate's lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said.
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But Mr McCallum was not the only person linked to the company to speak out about safety.
Just a few months earlier, former OceanGate employee David Lochridge raised concerns in an inspection report which identified "numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns", including how the hull had been tested.
Also in 2018, the Marine Technology Society sent a letter to OceanGate accusing it of making misleading claims about its design exceeding established industry safety standards, and warned that OceanGate's "experimental" approach could result in "negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic)".
In a blog post in 2019, Mr Rush insisted that the majority of marine accidents were down to operator error. He said OceanGate took safety requirements very seriously, but that keeping an outside body informed on every modification before it was tested in a real-word setting was "anathema to rapid innovation".
The former employee told the BBC that while he had worked at OceanGate, he had felt confident in Mr Rush's commitment to safety.
"Rush was very level-headed, he knew what needed to be done," he said. "He went on every sub dive, he was the pilot for every single one, and that's because he trusted the safety of the sub."
Mr Newman told the BBC the sub might not have been certified, but it was tested extensively. Mr Rush "introduced new ideas and new pieces that are not conventional, and some people don't like that", he said.
"The idea that this is something that's unique and Stockton did something wrong is disingenuous," he said.
Mr Rush himself told CBS reporter Mr Pogue last year that "if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed".
"Don't get in your car. Don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules," he said.
The question is why despite other successful dives, the sub's final trip ended in tragedy, Mr Newman said.
"Clearly, the pressure hull gave way, right? And the question is, why would that give way?"
Guillermo Söhnlein, a co-founder of OceanGate and Rush's former business partner, said he would not have taken a different approach himself.
"The human submersible community globally is very small, and we all know each other, and I think generally we all respect each other's opinions.
"The bottom line is that everyone's got different opinions on how subs should be designed," said Mr Söhnlein.
After his son also raised fears about the sub, Jay Bloom declined Mr Rush's invitation.
"I am sure he really believed what he was saying," Mr Bloom said. "But he was very wrong.
Additional reporting by Michelle Fleury and Nathalie Jimenez
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Yevgeny Prigozhin is to leave Russia for Belarus under an agreement announced by the Kremlin after the Wagner mercenary group leader abruptly ordered his forces to abandon their advance toward Moscow following a tense, chaotic 24 hours that handed President Vladimir Putin the biggest threat to his more than two-decade hold on power and raised the prospect of civil war.
Although the crisis for the Kremlin appears to have eased for now, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on June 25 said the fallout from the armed insurrection could take months to play out.
“I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian facade. We have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead,” Blinken told NBC News.
Separately, Blinken told ABC News that the Kremlin’s woes will likely assist Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion.
"To the extent that the Russians are distracted and divided, it may make their prosecution of aggression against Ukraine more difficult. So, I think this is clearly -- we see cracks emerging. Where they go, if anywhere, when they get there, very hard to say. I don't want to speculate on it," Blinken said.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefinggives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
Prigozhin, whose troops had been the most effective fighters among Putin’s forces since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, had turned on the Russian military and led what was called an armed insurrection, ordering his forces -- which he claimed numbered 25,000 -- to advance toward Moscow before he halted his so-called “march for justice" on June 24.
The Kremlin later confirmed it had reached a deal with Prigozhin, 62, to end the insurrection, saying the mercenary leader will move to Belarus and that a criminal case against him will be dropped. It wasn't immediately known where Prigozhin was early on June 25 or if he had left for Belarus.
In return, Wagner fighters who joined Prigozhin on his march would not be prosecuted, the Kremlin said. As part of the deal, Wagner fighters who did not take part in the march will come under the direct control of the Russian military -- a move Prigozhin had vehemently resisted while leading his troops in the Kremlin's war on Ukraine.
Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka helped mediate the deal, the Kremlin said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Lukashenka had guaranteed Prigozhin's safety.
Hours later, Rostov regional Governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram that Wagner forces were pulling out of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don in convoys, accompanied by tanks and other vehicles, and were headed for their field camps. The mercenary fighters earlier had captured control of a military base in the city of 1.2 million people near the Ukraine border.
Local authorities in neighboring Lipetsk and Voronezh provinces also said Wagner units were withdrawing from the southern regions on June 25.
WATCH: Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group, is greeted by locals as he left Rostov-on-Don in the back seat of a car late on June 24.
By midday on June 25, there were still no reports of Prigozhin arriving in Belarus.
It remained unclear whether Prigozhin would be joined in Belarus by any Wagner troops, and what role, if any, he might have there.
Also, it was not immediately clear where they would be based or how many had participated in the march toward Moscow. They previously had been fighting in Ukraine, but Prigozhin had announced they were giving up their positions to the Russian military.
A former British Army general warned of a potential attack on Ukraine from Belarus by Wagner fighters if large numbers of the mercenaries follow Prigozhin into exile there.
"The fact that he's gone to Belarus is a matter of some concern," former Chief of General Staff Richard Dannatt told Sky News on June 25.
Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. In a televised speech to the nation, Putin called the rebellion a "betrayal" and "treason."
Prigozhin claimed his fighters had reached to within 200 kilometers of the capital without spilling any blood, a possible hint to the Kremlin of his support within elements of the nation's security structures.
WATCH: RFE/RL reporters captured events in Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don amid an armed rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group that rocked Russia on June 24. The group launched a military column toward Moscow before its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced he was calling it off to "avoid bloodshed."
"We are turning our columns around and going back to the field camps according to our plan," Prigozhin said in a short, fiery audio message posted to Telegramon June 24.
State-owned RIA Novosti reported on June 25 that the situation around the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don was calm and street traffic had resumed.
In a video on the agency's Telegram messaging app, which it said was taken in the city, a municipal worker was sweeping a street and cars were moving along another street. The report could not be independently verified.
The insurrection, although having failed, has left the authoritarian Russian leader weakened and vulnerable, experts say.
“The fact that this was moderated by Lukashenka strikes me as embarrassing in the extreme,” Sam Greene, a Russia expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said in a tweet. “This whole episode may have punctured the air of inevitability that has kept him aloft for the past 23 years.”
'Complete Chaos'
Putin must now contend with the ramifications of the mutiny as Ukraine pushes ahead with its large-scale counteroffensive, a crucial endeavor that could shape the course of the conflict, including further opening the spigot of lethal Western military aid.
"Today the world saw that the masters of Russia do not control anything. Nothing at all. Just complete chaos," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address late on June 24.
Prigozhin’s forces swept into Rostov-on-Don in the early morning hours of June 24 where they easily seized key infrastructure, before moving north toward Moscow with little resistance, shocking the country and the world.
The Russian military reportedly fired on the Wagner forces at one point as they made their way along the highway toward Moscow, though RFE/RL could not confirm such an incident.
Prigozhin's insurrection came in the wake of months of intense public fighting with Russia's military leadership over its war strategy in Ukraine and ammunition supplies.
Over the spring, the Wagner leader repeatedly accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of intentionally holding back supplies of ammunition to his troops in Bakhmut, the site of the war's bloodiest battle.
Photo Gallery:
Wagner Fighters Seen In Key Russian City After Call For 'Rebellion'
Armed men, reportedly from the Wagner mercenary group, have been photographed in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don amid claims of a "mutiny" under way against Russia's Defense Ministry.
Semon Pegov, a pro-Russia military blogger, said in an interview with Prigozhin on April 29 that there was speculation the Russian military was withholding ammunition from Wagner for fear the mercenary leader would use it to storm Moscow and take power.
Prigozhin responded that it was an "interesting idea" but claimed he hadn't considered it.
However, just a month later, after his troops took Bakhmut in the first Russian victory of the war in about 10 months, Prigozhin toured several Russian regions, giving interviews to local media in what some experts said was a clear sign of his political ambition.
Meanwhile, Putin appeared to be siding with the Defense Ministry in its spat with Prigozhin, appearing alongside Shoigu in a sign of support.
Peskov said following the June 24 turmoil that there was no change in Putin's support for Shoigu.
In his audio statement announcing his troops' pullback, Prigozhin claimed the Kremlin had been seeking to disband his Wagner group.
Aleksandar Djokic, a political analyst, said in a tweet that Prigozhin had probably "caught wind" of the fact that he had lost Putin's favor and carried out the mutiny to prove his worth.
U.S. spy agencies picked up signs days ago that Prigozhin was preparing to rise up against his country’s defense establishment, U.S. media reported on June 24.
Intelligence officials conducted briefings at the White House, the Pentagon, and on Capitol Hill about the potential for unrest in Russia a full day before it unfolded, according to the Washington Post and New York Times.
With reporting by Current Time, AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is to leave Russia for Belarus under an agreement announced by the Kremlin after the Wagner mercenary group leader abruptly ordered his forces to abandon their advance toward Moscow following a tense, chaotic 24 hours that handed President Vladimir Putin the biggest threat to his more than two-decade hold on power and raised the prospect of civil war.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefinggives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensives, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
Prigozhin, whose troops had been the most effective fighters among Putin’s forces since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, had turned on the Russian military and led what was called an armed insurrection, ordering his forces -- which he claimed numbered 25,000 -- to advance toward Moscow before he halted his so-called “march for justice" on June 24.
The Kremlin later confirmed it had reached a deal with Prigozhin to end the insurrection, saying the mercenary leader will move to Belarus and that a criminal case against him will be dropped. It wasn't immediately known where Prigozhin was early on June 25 or if he had left for Belarus.
In return, Wagner fighters who joined Prigozhin on his march would not be prosecuted, the Kremlin said. As part of the deal, Wagner fighters who did not take part in the march will come under the direct control of the Russian military -- a move Prigozhin had vehemently resisted while leading his troops in the Kremlin's war on Ukraine.
Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka helped mediate the deal, the Kremlin said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Lukashenka had guaranteed Prigozhin's safety.
Hours later, Rostov region Governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram that Wagner forces were pulling out of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don in convoys, accompanied by tanks and other vehicles, and were headed for their field camps. The mercenary fighters earlier had captured control of a military base in the city of 1.2 million people near the Ukraine border.
It was not immediately clear where they would be based or how many had participated in the march toward Moscow. They previously had been fighting in Ukraine, but Prigozhin had announced they were giving up their positions to the Russian military.
Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. In a televised speech to the nation, Putin called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”
Prigozhin claimed his fighters had reached to within 200 kilometers of the capital without spilling any blood, a possible hint to the Kremlin of his support within elements of the nation's security structures.
WATCH: RFE/RL reporters captured events in Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don amid an armed rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group that rocked Russia on June 24. The group launched a military column toward Moscow before its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced he was calling it off to "avoid bloodshed."
"We are turning our columns around and going back to the field camps according to our plan," Prigozhin said in a short, fiery audio message posted to Telegramon June 24.
State-owned RIA Novosti reported on June 25 that the situation around the headquarters of Russia's Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don was calm and street traffic had resumed.
In a video on the agency's Telegram messaging app, which it said was taken in the city, a municipal worker was sweeping a street and cars were moving along another street. The report could not be independently verified.
State media said the road restrictions introduced to stop the Wagner rebellion were lifted in most areas by the morning of June 25.
However, highway restrictions in the Tula and Moscow regions remained in place, the Federal Road Agency said on the Telegram messaging app.
Although the insurrection appears to be over for now, it has left the authoritarian Russian leader weakened and vulnerable, experts say.
“The fact that this was moderated by Lukashenka strikes me as embarrassing in the extreme,” Sam Greene, a Russia expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said in a tweet. “This whole episode may have punctured the air of inevitability that has kept him aloft for the past 23 years.”
In a sign of the gravity of the situation earlier in the day, Putin was forced to address the nation, saying in televised remarks that he would do"everything to protect the country." He also called the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey to inform them of the situation.
The armed insurrection, unprecedented in post-Soviet Russia, put other nations on alert, with U.S. President Joe Biden contacting his counterparts in France, Germany, and Britain
Putin must now contend with the ramifications of the mutiny as Ukraine pushes ahead with its large-scale counteroffensive, a crucial endeavor that could shape the course of the conflict, including further opening the spigot of lethal Western military aid.
"Today the world saw that the masters of Russia do not control anything. Nothing at all. Just complete chaos," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address late on June 24.
Prigozhin’s forces swept into Rostov-on-Don in the early morning hours of June 24 where they easily seized key infrastructure, before moving north toward Moscow with little resistance, shocking the country and the world.
The Russian military reportedly fired on the Wagner forces at one point as they made their way along the highway toward Moscow, though RFE/RL could not confirm such an incident.
Top Russian officials and personalities -- including former President Dmitry Medvedev, Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill, and Russian State Duma head Vyacheslav Volodin -- echoed Putin's call for Russian citizens to rally and for Wagner troops to halt the insurrection.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Putin ally who has headed the republic in Russia's North Caucasus region since 2007, said he was going to deploy Chechen troops to "preserve Russia's unity and protect its statehood."
'Personal Ambition'
The Russian leader said that Prigozhin had "betrayed" his country out of "personal ambition."
Prigozhin responded promptly to Putin's allegations of betrayal, saying in an audio message that the Russian president was "deeply mistaken" and that he and his forces "are patriots of the motherland."
Prigozhin began his march toward Moscow after accusing the Russian Defense Ministry of launching rocket attacks on the rear camps of his forces in Ukraine using artillery and attack helicopters that allegedly killed many of his men. The Kremlin called the mercenary leader's accusation false.
Prigozhin's insurrection came in the wake of months of intense public fighting with Russia's military leadership over its war strategy in Ukraine and ammunition supplies.
Over the spring, the Wagner leader repeatedly accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov of intentionally holding back supplies of ammunition to his troops in Bakhmut, the site of the war's bloodiest battle.
Photo Gallery:
Wagner Fighters Seen In Key Russian City After Call For 'Rebellion'
Armed men, reportedly from the Wagner mercenary group, have been photographed in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don amid claims of a "mutiny" under way against Russia's Defense Ministry.
Semon Pegov, a pro-Russia military blogger, said in an interview with Prigozhin on April 29 that there was speculation the Russian military was withholding ammunition from Wagner for fear the mercenary leader would use it to storm Moscow and take power.
Prigozhin responded that it was an "interesting idea" but claimed he hadn't considered it.
However, just a month later, after his troops took Bakhmut in the first Russian victory of the war in about 10 months, Prigozhin toured several Russian regions, giving interviews to local media in what some experts said was a clear sign of his political ambition.
Meanwhile, Putin appeared to be siding with the Defense Ministry in its spat with Prigozhin, appearing alongside Shoigu in a sign of support.
Peskov said following the June 24 turmoil that there was no change in Putin's support for Shoigu.
In his audio statement announcing his troops' pullback, Prigozhin claimed the Kremlin had been seeking to disband his Wagner group.
Aleksandar Djokic, a political analyst, said in a tweet that Prigozhin had probably "caught wind" of the fact that he had lost Putin's favor and carried out the mutiny to prove his worth.
U.S. spy agencies picked up signs days ago that Prigozhin was preparing to rise up against his country’s defense establishment, U.S. media reported on June 24.
Intelligence officials conducted briefings at the White House, the Pentagon, and on Capitol Hill about the potential for unrest in Russia a full day before it unfolded, according to the Washington Post and New York Times.
With reporting by Current Time, AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS.
The expert said: "It would have been so sudden, that they wouldn't even have known that there was a problem, or what happened to them. It's like being here one minute, and then the switch is turned off.
"You're alive one millisecond, and the next millisecond you're dead." Tributes continue to pour for those who sadly lost their lives during the expedition to visit the Titanic wreckage site at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean reports The Daily Record.
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This included Chief Executive of OceanGate Expeditions, the owners of the Titan submersible, who was killed alongside two members of a prominent Pakistani family Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood. Hamish Harding, a British adventurer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet also died.
The five day search for the Titan sub was brought to an end with the news that nobody could have survived the implosion. Doctor Molé suggests that the crew would not have realised what was happening to them.
He said: "They would have been ripped to shreds. An implosion is when the wave of pressure is inward, whereas an explosion is when the pressure wave or the shock wave goes out from whatever the source of that is.
The pressure chamber of the sub, where those aboard were held, was protected by a sealed pod as well as a pressurised gas system. However, the carbon fibre cylinders of the pressure vessel may have gave way, in turn causing the implosion.
The medical expert suggests that the event would have been violent and instant as high pressure water rushed into and flooded the vessel, which would have torn apart the hull and crushed the five people onboard. Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: "The pressure hull is the chamber where the occupants reside. It sounds as though they had reached the bottom when the pressure vessel imploded, and usually, when it gives way, it gives way all at once.
"When somebody stands on an empty soda can, it would support your weight, but then if you press on the sides, the can would collapse immediately. It's simply where the debris and fragments and everything else goes inward because of a strong external force. In this case, it was the ocean."
He continued: "At least at the depth of the Titanic, which is 12,500 feet, the external pressure would be 6,000 lbs per square inch. It's that pressure that, if there were a weakness in the hull, would cause the hull to collapse and suddenly creates a shockwave.
"An implosion can certainly be every bit of destructive as an explosion." The Titan embarked on its journey to the Titanic wreck on Sunday at 8am.
The vessel was then reported overdue on Sunday afternoon around 435 miles south of St John's, Newfoundland, Canada.
Rescue teams were rushed in to help locate the vessel, which included ships, planes and other equiptment. However, after days of searching, any hope the five aboard were alive was slashed early on Thursday as Titan's 96-hour supply of air was expected to run out.
The Coast Guard later announced that debris has been found around 1,600 feet (488) from the Titanic wreckage site, with conclusions drawn of a tragic implosion. Tributes to those who lost their life and praise for the search teams who tried to locate and save them have poured in worldwide.
Brit Hamish Harding’s family released a statement, saying: ”He was one of a kind and we adored him... What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”
The Dawood family thanked rescuers, writing: “Their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time, We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers from all over the world who stood by us during our need.” Longtime friend and colleague of Nargeolet told French media that when contact was lost Sunday, he quickly feared the worst.
“Unfortunately, I thought straight away of an implosion,” diver and retired underwater filmographer Christian Pétron said Friday to broadcaster France-Info. At the depths in which the submersible was operating, the pressure is intense and unforgiving, he noted.
“Obviously, the slightest problem with the hull and its implosion is immediate,” Pétron said.
The Wagner Group is a private army of mercenaries that has been fighting alongside the regular Russian army in Ukraine.
As we've been reporting, its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has called for a rebellion, and troops from the group appear to be heading north across Russia, towards Moscow.
The group is estimated to have around 25,000 soldiers, a figure used by Prigozhin on Friday.
In January, the UK Ministry of Defence estimated the Wagner Group commanded a peak of 50,000 troops - however around 20,000 of them have reportedly been killed while fighting in Ukraine.
Wagner Group's 25,000 troops compares with an estimated 800,000 active soldiers in the Russian army.
The force was once estimated at more than one million soldiers, however it is thought to have suffered at least 220,000 casualties during the war.
Russia is thought to have a further 250,000 service members in reserve.
