Prigozhin’s Wagner troops to stop march on Moscow as Belarus brokers deal

Prigozhin’s Wagner troops to stop march on Moscow as Belarus brokers deal

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner paramilitary group, said his forces will stop their march on Moscow and return to their camps to avoid bloodshed, as the Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko announced a deal to halt the armed confrontation threatening Russia.

Lukashenko, who said he spent most of Saturday negotiating with Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, said an agreement was reached “that unleashing a bloodbath on the territory of Russia was unacceptable.” The deal offered to Prigozhin is “absolutely advantageous and acceptable,” and will involve unspecified security guarantees for Wagner, he added. There were no further details.

Wagner troops seized the southern Russian city of Rostov on Saturday morning and advanced toward Moscow through the day, facing limited resistance along the way even after Putin ordered his military to put down what he described as a treasonous mutiny.

The crisis unfolding in Russia represented the most serious challenge to Putin’s 23-year rule—a direct consequence of the strains put on Russian society and armed forces by the war that he unleashed against Ukraine in February last year. Prigozhin has a history of going back on his promises, and it wasn’t yet clear whether Wagner’s uprising was over—and what political price Putin had agreed to pay.

Prigozhin’s key demand for the past several months was the removal of the minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, whom he blamed for mismanaging the war in Ukraine.

“Understanding all the responsibility that Russian blood may be spilled by one of the sides, we have turned around our columns and are returning to the field camps, according to plan,” Prigozhin said. [Continue reading…]

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