Why Vladimir Putin didn’t kill Wagner nemesis Yevgeny Prigozhin

Wagner’s Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in Belarus as the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, revealed the deal struck with Vladimir Putin not to execute the mutiny leader.

Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in his Belarus exile after the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, said he convinced Vladimir Putin not to kill the Wagner leader.

Despite a new investigation into Prigozhin’s finances, the mercenary group’s boss survived the aborted mutiny, for now, through a deal negotiated by Lukashenko to avoid what Putin said in a new speech was the verge of civil war.

“I said to Putin: we could waste (Prigozhin), no problem. If not on the first try, then on the second. I told him: don’t do this,” Lukashenko said during a meeting with security officials.

Lukashenko told Prigozhin, meanwhile, that he would be “crushed like a bug” during 10 calls with the “semi-mad” rebel leader over the weekend. Prigozhin arrived in Belarus on Tuesday, local time, under the deal to end the Wagner group’s march to Moscow, Lukashenko added.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed credit for convincing Vladimir Putin not to squash Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘like a bug’. Picture: AFP

It comes as Putin admitted in a speech to 2,500 members of Russia’s National Guard and Kremlin security forces how close they came to civil war.

“You have saved our Motherland from upheaval. In fact, you have de facto stopped a civil war,” Putin said at the Kremlin.

“In the confrontation with rebels, our comrades-in-arms, pilots, were killed. They did not flinch and honourably fulfilled their orders and their military duty,” he added before a minute of silence in their memory.

While the Federal Security Service (FSB), dropped a probe into the mutiny, Putin said a new investigation would be opened into the finances of Prigozhin, who received about $2 billion from Moscow to fund Wagner and his catering company, which supplied the Russian army.

“I do hope that, as part of this work, no one stole anything, or, let’s say, stole less, but we will, of course, investigate all of this,” Putin said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin walks down the steps to address troops from the defence ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry. Picture: AFP

WAGNER MERCS ‘PRICELESS’ TO BELARUS

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said Wagner mercenaries in exile would be housed at an abandoned military base.

“Please – we have a fence, we have everything – put up your tents,” Lukashenko said, adding the country welcomed their combat experience.

“If their commanders come to us and help us … (this is) experience. They’ve been through it. They’ll tell you about weapons: which ones worked well, which ones didn’t. And tactics, and weapons, and how to attack, how to defend,” he said.

“This is priceless. That’s what we need to take from Wagner. We will keep a close eye on them.”

WAGNER NEVER HAD POPULAR SUPPORT: PUTIN

President Vladimir Putin claimed Wagner mercenaries failed to win the support of the Russian people or its army.

“People who were drawn into the rebellion saw that the army and the people were not with them,” the Russian leader said in a televised address to law enforcement agencies outside the Kremlin.

The President also said that Moscow had not redeployed any soldiers from Ukraine to counter-rebelling Wagner forces inside Russia.

“We did not have to take combat units from the special military operation zone,” Putin told said, adding that “all military formations continued to wage a heroic fight at the front”.

Servicemen gather on the Sobornaya (Cathedral) Square before President Vladimir Putin's address to troops. Picture: AFP

National Guard head Viktor Zolotov, praised for helping Russia avoid a civil war. Picture: AFP

PUTIN SHAKEN BY WAGNER ‘MASTERCLASS’

Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin has released an 11-minute audio claiming his mutiny was “a masterclass” in how to launch an invasion and a lesson for the Kremlin.

The leader of the Wagner private army has broken his silence as did President Vladimir Putin overnight to call for calm and a unified Russia in the face of confusion and potential destabilising rhetoric.

Putin was defiant in his televised message, which came after Prigozhin’s audio message, declaring he had let the weekend’s 36-hour mutiny to go on as long as it did to avoid bloodshed and give those “who had made a mistake to come to their senses”.

But Prigozhin broke his silence to declare he too could have gone further and said the Russian people had cheered him on as he taught the Russian military a lesson.

The chief of Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Picture: AFP

Europe remained tense as the “truce” between the two Russian war lords continued to generate confusion and apprehension.

Predictably, the Kremlin also announced it was investigating whether Western intelligence had provided support to Wagner mercenaries as it sought to shift blame for the turmoil. In support of the narrative, Russia claimed to have scrambled two SU-27 jets to intercept a British RC-135 reconnaissance and intelligence spy aircraft and two RAF Typhoon fighters over the Black Sea that it claimed was heading into Russian airspace.

Yevgeny Prigozhin (centre) speaks with Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev (right) and Russian Defence Deputy Minister Yunus-Bek Evkurov inside the headquarters of the Russian southern military district in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden swiftly declared NATO and the West had nothing to do with Russia’s internal strife, as did British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Putin sought to drive a wedge through Wagner, which number up to 25,000, by defiantly declaring they had been lied to by rebellion “organisers” and they should realise “their tragic mistake”.

“Any blackmail or way to bring confusion to Russia is doomed to failure … I made steps to avoid large-scale bloodshed,” he said in a televised address, his first public appearance since the aborted mutiny on Saturday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with the country's top security officials in Moscow on Sunday after an armed rebellion shook his more than two decades of rule. Picture: Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik/AFP

A visibly rattled Putin, while on the one hand said Wagner fighters should be forgiven, he also said they had “betrayed their country, their people” and played into the hands of Ukraine and the West which wanted Russia to “choke in civil strife”.

After his broadcast, footage was issued of Putin meeting with his security and intelligence chiefs and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose apparent Ukraine battlefield failures was what sparked Prigozhin to public condemn him and launch his “justice march’ on Moscow.

Putin’s unscheduled address came after the 62-year-old Wagner leader gave a defiant 11-minute audio ramble on Telegram in which he admitted having to shoot down Russian aircraft because they were attacking his field camps. About 30 of his fighters were killed he said; seven Russian aircraft were shot down in retaliation, killing 13 airmen.

Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu speaks from an undisclosed location on Russian state television, his first public appearance since a failed mutiny by Wagner forces. Picture: Russian Defence Ministry/AFP

He said it was not his aim to topple the Kremlin but rather provide a masterclass in military strategy as he came within 200km of Moscow in a day unopposed.

He also declared his action and forces had popular public support in the face of inept Russian regular forces.

“They were all happy when we passed through,” he said. “Our march of justice has shed light on so many things we’ve talked about before: grave security breaches across the country. We blocked all military units and airfields that were on our way.”

Ominously, Prigozhin thanked Belarus for taking him and his fighters in, to “continue their work”.

Meanwhile, Russia on Tuesday was preparing to take over military hardware belonging to the Wagner mercenary group.

“Preparations are underway for the transfer of heavy military equipment from the private military company Wagner to units of the Russian armed forces,” the defence ministry said in a statement online.

With AFP