Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin called for an uprising against Russia’s military leaders.
He accused Russian generals of carrying out an airstrike on his fighters in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said his troops crossed the Russian border from Ukraine on Friday night.
Russia accused Prigozhin of launching an “armed rebellion inside Russia”.
Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to suggest he had sent an armed convoy on a 1,200-km (750-mile) charge towards Moscow on Saturday in an unlikely attempt to topple the military leadership.
He demanded in a video posted on Saturday that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to meet him in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
