Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin lands in Belarus to begin exile
A Russian rocket struck a bustling restaurant in eastern Ukraine, killing at least eight people including three children.
Belarus welcomed Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin into exile on Tuesday following an aborted rebellion, as NATO warned it was ready to defend against “Moscow or Minsk”.
As the fallout unfolded from Mr Prigozhin’s brief mutiny – the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades – Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to shore up his authority by thanking regular troops for averting a civil war.
But as Moscow announced preparations to disarm Wagner fighters, Mr Putin’s arch foe, jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, launched a stinging attack on the President in his first comments since the aborted mutiny by the paramilitaries.
“There is no bigger threat to Russia than Putin’s regime,” Navalny said on social media. “Putin’s regime is so dangerous to the country that even its inevitable demise will create the threat of civil war.”
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in The Hague that it was still too early to draw conclusions from the move to Belarus of Mr Prigozhin and, likely, some of his forces, but he vowed that the alliance was ready to defend its members.
“What is absolutely clear is that we have sent a clear message to Moscow and to Minsk that NATO is there to protect every ally and every inch of NATO territory,” Mr Stoltenberg said.
Mr Putin’s supporters, however, insisted that his rule was not weakened by the revolt.
Asked whether Mr Putin’s power was diminished by the sight of Wagner’s rebel mercenaries seizing a military HQ, advancing on Moscow and shooting down military aircraft along the way, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused political commentators of exaggerating, adding that: “We don’t agree.”
Mr Putin tried to portray the dramatic events at the weekend as a victory for the Russian army. “You de facto stopped civil war,” he told troops from the defence ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry gathered in a Kremlin courtyard to hold a minute’s silence for airmen slain by Wagner.
Mr Prigozhin, who built Russia’s most powerful private army, has boasted – with some support from news footage – that his men were cheered by civilians during his short-lived revolt.
But Mr Putin insisted that Wagner’s ordinary fighters had seen that “the army and the people were not with them”.
In a separate meeting with defence officials, Mr Putin confirmed that Wagner was wholly funded by the Russian federal budget, despite operating as an independent company, adding that in the past year alone since the assault on Ukraine, Moscow had paid the group 86.262 billion roubles (about $1.5bn) in salaries.
Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko is seeking credit for stepping in to mediate Wagner’s U-turn on the road to Moscow, and on Tuesday he criticised Russia’s handling of the issue.
Talking to his own military officials, Mr Lukashenko said that Mr Prigozhin was arriving in Belarus on Tuesday, and revealed that he had urged Mr Putin not to kill the rogue mercenary.
“I said to Putin: we could waste him, no problem. If not on the first try, then on the second. I told him: don’t do this,” he said, according to state media.
In his address, Mr Putin also stressed that the revolt had not forced Russia to withdraw any of its units from Ukraine, where fighting continued as Kyiv’s brigades pursued their counteroffensive in the east and south.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba played down the effect of Russia’s internal strife on the conflict. “Unfortunately, Prigozhin gave up too quickly. So there was no time for this demoralising effect to penetrate Russian trenches,” he told CNN.
On Tuesday, a Russian rocket struck a bustling restaurant in the middle of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, killing at least eight people including three children, regional officials said. The blast at the Ria Pizza restaurant also wounded at least 47 at the eatery in the city of 150,000 people, one of the largest still under Ukraine control in the east.
Meanwhile, the US announced a new $US500m ($752m) tranche of arms to bolster Ukraine’s counteroffensive, including armoured vehicles, precision munitions and mine-clearing equipment.
AFP
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