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Senin, 26 Juni 2023

Russia still investigating Wagner boss Prigozhin for treason - BBC

By Laurence Peter

BBC News

The Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin remains under Russian investigation for his mutiny, despite the Kremlin saying criminal charges had been dropped, state media report.

Prigozhin said on Monday his group's aim had been to "avoid the destruction of Wagner", in his first message since Saturday's rebellion.

Wagner occupied Rostov-on-Don in the south, then advanced towards Moscow.

But hours later they turned back and charges were dropped, the Kremlin said.

Many felt the apparent deal not to prosecute him showed weakness from President Vladimir Putin, who had earlier denounced Wagner's "treason" in a televised address.

Instead, Prigozhin was offered exile in neighbouring Belarus, the Kremlin said, following mediation by Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

The Kremlin tried to project an image of business as usual on Monday.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown in a video, allegedly at a forward command post for the war on Ukraine.

It is not clear exactly when that was filmed.

Wagner had been demanding that Mr Shoigu be sacked for his alleged mistakes on the battlefield in Ukraine.

In his first appearance since the weekend turmoil, President Putin gave a video address on Monday to engineers attending an industry forum, in which he lavishly praised their contributions to the Russian economy.

And Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin urged his team to unite behind Mr Putin.

Operation "restore Putin's reputation" is now in full swing, the BBC's Eastern Europe Correspondent Sarah Rainsford says.

In an 11-minute audio message on Telegram on Monday Prigozhin said he did not target President Putin and had no desire to overthrow the regime when he declared his troops would march on Moscow last Friday.

He said Wagner had sought to "hold accountable those people who made a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation [in Ukraine] with their unprofessional actions".

Although Wagner fights on the same side as the Russian military, Prigozhin has long been critical of how the war has been fought.

He said the group marched to stop Wagner being disbanded and incorporated into Russia's defence ministry, and that he ordered his troops to turn back "to avoid spilling the blood of Russian soldiers".

The mercenary boss did not reveal his location during the message, but did say Mr Lukashenko had offered Wagner a way to maintain its independence.

It was the first time Prigozhin had spoken since agreeing to abort his mutiny attempt late on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, Wagner seized Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people where the military command centre for Russia's campaign in Ukraine is located.

Then a Wagner column headed north towards Moscow via the city of Voronezh, triggering a state of emergency in the capital and around it.

Before the agreement to end the march, Mr Putin addressed the nation to condemn Wagner. He did not mention Prigozhin - formerly a close ally - by name, but promised to punish those who had led the mutiny for "treason" and what he called "a stab in the back" of Russia.

Hours later, the mercenaries turned round and left Rostov-on-Don, but the apparent deal involving Belarus left many questions unanswered.

President Putin - screen grab from Kremlin video, 26 Jun 23

The Kremlin has vowed to incorporate Wagner into the regular Russian armed forces.

But Wagner was still openly recruiting into its own ranks on Monday for service in Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.

A notice on Wagner's Telegram channel offers new recruits a minimum of 240,000 roubles a month (£2,236; $2,843) - a fortune for most Russians, especially those in poor regions. It lists call-up centres across Russia, the main one being at Molkino in the far south.

In the eastern Siberian city of Novosibirsk the mercenary group was also recruiting, Russia's Tass news agency reported. The Wagner office there had been shut down on Saturday - but on Monday its banners were on display there again.

Wagner has long been seen as a key tool in Mr Putin's ambition to restore Russian influence globally.

Amid continuing confusion about Wagner's status, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the group would continue its military role in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Wagner fighters have a reputation for brutality in Africa and have played a key role in Syria supporting President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

In Ukraine, months of bitter fighting in the devastated city of Bakhmut is believed to have cost thousands of Wagner men's lives.

In an expletive-laden video ahead of the Wagner mutiny, Prigozhin accused the defence ministry of depriving his men of the arms they needed.

Bakhmut remains the only Russian military gain of any note in more than six months of heavy fighting. And Ukraine says its forces have pushed the Russians back around Bakhmut in recent days.

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2023-06-26 17:06:51Z
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'A huge humiliation': failed Russian putsch exposes deep flaws in Putin's regime - Financial Times

Vladimir Putin vowed to punish Yevgeny Prigozhin for “treason” over the warlord’s armed uprising. Instead, the former Kremlin caterer and his Wagner group appeared to escape any harsh consequences after launching the first coup attempt in Russia for three decades.

Prigozhin’s failed putsch ended abruptly, but it still exposed deep flaws at the heart of Putin’s regime, called the Russian president’s invasion of Ukraine into serious doubt, and raised the spectre of state collapse if unrest were to boil over again, people close to the Kremlin told the Financial Times.

“It’s a huge humiliation for Putin, of course. That’s obvious,” said a Russian oligarch who has known the president since the 1990s. “Thousands of people without any resistance are going from Rostov almost to Moscow, and nobody can do anything. Then [Putin] announced they would be punished, and they were not. That’s definitely a sign of weakness.”

At the root of the rebellion lay frustration within Russia’s armed forces at how Putin had been handling the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to the extent that a row between paramilitaries and regular armed forces nearly brought down the state. Russia’s army and security services were unable to forestall Prigozhin’s revolt.

The ease with which Wagner launched its revolt, the lack of resistance it met from other security forces and the rapturous reception its fighters met in the southern city of Rostov as they stood down “damages [Putin’s] reputation domestically”, said Alexei Venediktov, the well-connected former editor of the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

“It turns out you can start a revolt against the president, and be forgiven. That means the president isn’t that strong.”

Rostov locals greet Wagner fighters on the street — Rostov locals greet Wagner fighters as they deploy by the city’s army command centre © STR/Reuters

The extraordinary events have led even ardent supporters of the invasion to publicly question Russia’s rationale for it and worry further shocks could follow.

“The whole world has seen that Russia is on the verge of a dire political crisis,” Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin spin-doctor and MP, wrote on Telegram. “Yes, the putsch didn’t succeed, but putsches have fundamental reasons behind them. And if those reasons remain, then the putsch might happen again. And it could be successful.”

For now, the Kremlin says it has quelled the threat from Prigozhin after the warlord agreed to leave Russia for Belarus in exchange for a promise not to prosecute him or Wagner’s fighters.

On Sunday, Russian state media attempted to show life going on largely as normal. Municipal workers fanned out to repair the highways damaged by Wagner’s advance, while Russian forces reclaimed the command centre in Rostov that Wagner had briefly taken over the day before.

But Russia’s attempt to play down the incident as an inconvenient blip belies the deep problems the invasion of Ukraine has created for Putin’s rule.

“You can’t see this as anything other than a sign of weakness and dysfunction,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. “This isn’t some kind of unexpected one-off event or external shock. This is part and parcel of the war,” she said.

The Kremlin insisted on Saturday that Prigozhin’s revolt would have no effect on its handling of the war. But Wagner’s prominent role on the front lines was itself a consequence of how Russia mishandled the invasion.

Initially formed to fight covertly in conflicts around the world, Putin redeployed Wagner’s men to Ukraine when the invasion plan failed. He then let Prigozhin swell his ranks by personally signing pardons for convicted criminals who joined up to fight.

“They started a war they shouldn’t have, they couldn’t run it properly, and they decided to resort to extremes by letting him round up an army of prisoners,” Schulmann said. “He became a political actor, and they had to deal with it. One thing leads to another.”

Putin’s reluctance to end Prigozhin’s months-long public feud with the defence ministry appears to have convinced the former caterer he was powerful enough to succeed in his mutiny attempt, according to people close to the Kremlin.

But the episode has also proved damaging for Prigozhin after he failed to secure the resignations of defence minister Sergei Shoigu or Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion forces.

Some of Wagner’s troops will sign contracts with the defence ministry, the Kremlin said. That amounts to a humiliation after Prigozhin said his group would never submit themselves to Shoigu — a step that would rob him of the money and influence that came from only answering to Putin personally.

Once the revolt began, Prigozhin appears to have had little idea of how to see it through successfully, according to a person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s.

“I don’t think he had anything particular in mind. He just decided to go and convince Putin that he should get to keep all the money they took away from him,” the person said. “Then the situation got completely out of control.”

“At some point he realised he didn’t know what to do next. You get to Moscow, and then what? You open the doors of a dozen prisons, some unimaginable freaks come out, the country goes to shit, and then you get to the Kremlin . . . and you don’t know what to do.”

The humiliating episode will probably prompt Putin to dismantle Wagner and ensure it can no longer threaten the state, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“They promised not to touch anyone, but I think it’s entirely possible someone will get jailed, or die in mysterious circumstances, to scare the rest,” Gabuev said. “Putin must by now have realised how vulnerable the system is and will try to fix it.”

Much remains unclear about how exactly Russia convinced Prigozhin to stand down, with many in the Russian elite suspecting that Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who ostensibly brokered the deal, was a stand-in for powerful figures in Russia.

Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal that ended the rebellion © Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

“Everyone wanted to call [Prigozhin] and make a deal. And in the end they found a more reasonable middleman in the form of Luka, who found a way for both sides to step back,” the person close to Prigozhin said.

On Monday, however, state media reported that Prigozhin was still facing charges, adding more uncertainty after a febrile weekend.

After failing to stop the revolt, Russia’s elite is unlikely to escape unscathed either, with Putin now conscious of the threat to his own power.

“This was a huge counter-intelligence failure. The CIA knew this was coming, and your own secret services didn’t know or didn’t report it. So he’s going to tighten the screws and keep the elite on edge,” said Gabuev.

But even wholesale changes may not be enough to restore order, the oligarch said. After Russia’s war effort began to falter last year, many in Russia’s elite began discussing the likelihood of a “time of troubles”, a repeat of the long, violent political crisis in the early 17th century when different factions vied for the throne.

But even then, the oligarch said, “if it started I expected the army to intervene immediately. And they did not. That’s a surprise.”

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2023-06-26 08:53:46Z
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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian defence minister visits frontline troops in wake of coup - The Telegraph

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.

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2023-06-26 07:09:29Z
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Minggu, 25 Juni 2023

Titanic sub firm: A maverick, rule-breaking founder and a tragic end - BBC

Stockton Rush - CEO Ocean Gate exhibitions

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."

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.

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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

Related Topics

Titanic submersible accident

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2023-06-25 15:38:13Z
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Kyriakos Mitsotakis set for return to power in Greek elections - Financial Times

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2023-06-25 17:06:48Z
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Situation In Russia Said To Be Calming, But U.S. Says Turmoil For Putin Not Over - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

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 Briefing gives 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 Telegram on 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'

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.

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2023-06-25 15:20:00Z
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Prigozhin To Leave For Belarus In Agreement Reached With Kremlin After Wagner Chief Halts March Toward Moscow - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

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.

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.”

"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 Telegram on 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.

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.

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

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.

Prigozhin responded that it was an "interesting idea" but claimed he hadn't considered it.

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.

With reporting by Current Time, AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS.

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Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

Wagner Fighters Seen In Key Russian City After Call For 'Rebellion'

With reporting by Current Time, AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

Wagner Fighters Seen In Key Russian City After Call For 'Rebellion'

With reporting by Current Time, AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS.