Prigozhin has demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, long the target of his withering criticism for his conduct of the war in Ukraine. Red Square was shut down, and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.īut after the deal was struck, Prigozhin announced that while his men were just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow, he had decided to retreat to avoid “shedding Russian blood.” His troops were ordered back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers. In allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Peskov said Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.” Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. In a televised speech to the nation, Putin called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege, whose forces seized a key military facility in southern Russia before advancing on the capital. The charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin for mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped and the troops who joined him also will not be prosecuted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced, and fighters from his Wagner Group who did not take part in the uprising will be offered contracts by the Defence Ministry. The rebellious Russian mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow before abruptly reversing course will move to neighboring Belarus and not face prosecution, the Kremlin said Saturday, as part of a deal to defuse a crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power.

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