New Delhi: Russia has dropped “armed insurrection” criminal charges against Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and its members, a domestic intelligence agency said on Tuesday, The New York Times reported. In a statement, the Federal Security Service said, “It was established that its (Wagner) participants had withheld their actions on June 24 with the aim of directly committing the crime,” adding, “These are important for further investigation.” Taking into account other circumstances, the investigating agency decided to close the criminal case on June 27.”
The amnesty for Wagner fighters who took part in the uprising was part of a deal brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday between Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin that ended the war and avoided possible bloodshed in the country. Wagner’s forces also shot down several Russian aircraft, killing an unknown number of airmen, whom Putin has praised as “fallen hero pilots”.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the mercenary group’s fighters are preparing to hand over military equipment to the army, The New York Times reported. The announcements appear to be an attempt to address one of the questions that has lingered since the weekend’s uprising: the fate of Wagner’s heavily armed forces.
Putin has said that all private forces fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine, including members of Wagner, must come under the supervision of the Russian Defense Ministry by July 1. But there was no immediate reaction from the Wagner Group or Prigozhin, who has not been seen in public since Saturday.
Prigozhin said in an audio message published by his news service on Monday that the march was a protest and was not intended to overthrow the regime. In explaining his decision to reverse his march on Moscow, Prigozhin said that he wanted to avoid Russian bloodshed. “We started our march because of injustice. We went to show our protest, not to overthrow the government in the country,” Prigozhin said in an audio message, Al Jazeera reported.
In his new audio message, Prigozhin said about 30 of his fighters were killed in an attack by Russian forces on the mercenary group on Friday. They said the attack happened days before Wagner left his post on June 30 and handed over the equipment to the Southern Military District in Rostov.
According to CNN, Prigozhin claimed in the latest audio message, “Overnight, we have moved 780 kilometers (about 484 miles). Two hundred kilometers (about 125 miles) were left to Moscow.” “Not a single soldier on the ground was killed,” he said.