Rebel Wagner forces, threatening march to Moscow, abruptly stand down

A rapidly evolving domestic security crisis threatening the government of President Vladimir Putin of Russia abruptly appeared to ease late Saturday, when a mercenary tycoon whose forces had seized critical military and civilian facilities in southern Russia said he would pull back his fighters marching to Moscow.

The mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had brazenly seized control of the Southern Military District headquarters in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and stationed his fighters and tanks on the streets, said his Wagner private military company had made it within about 124 miles of Moscow, the capital, without injuring his fighters.

But he said it had reached the point where Russian blood was about to be spilled “on one side.” And out of a sense of responsibility, he would turn his forces around and send them back to their field camps.

Many questions remained unanswered as the day ended in Moscow, such as whether Wagner forces would fully retreat from Rostov-on-Don; what would happen to the Russian military leadership, which Prigozhin was seeking to topple amid accusations of mismanagement; and whether Prigozhin, who Russian prosecutors had formally accused of organizing an armed uprising, would remain a free man.

The abrupt U-turn came minutes after the leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko – a loyal ally of Putin’s – said in a statement that he had been holding talks throughout the day with Prigozhin, who ultimately agreed to stop the movement of armed Wagner fighters on Russian territory and take other steps to defuse the crisis.

“At the moment, there is an absolutely advantageous and acceptable option for solving the situation on the table, with security guarantees for the PMC Wagner fighters,” Lukashenko’s office said in a statement republished by the Belarusian state news agency Belta. It did not offer any additional details.

The prospect of a peaceful resolution did not fully solve the crisis facing Putin, who hours earlier in a televised national address had vowed to put down the armed mutiny of Wagner forces and derided the fighters as traitors who were stabbing the motherland in the back.

The dramatic moves by Wagner – which for years did Putin’s shadowy geopolitical bidding in nations abroad and suffered profound losses on the battlefield in Ukraine before turning its sights on Russia itself – represented the biggest domestic blowback Putin had faced since launching his war in Ukraine last year, and could have cascading effects within Russia.

For a brief moment, the group of fighters appeared to pose one of the gravest threats to the Russian president’s leadership since he took power more than 23 years ago, and showed the risk posed by armed formations operating outside of government control, when those well-trained militants become aggrieved.

The head-spinning sequence of events that played out in less than 24 hours plunged a nation already struggling to succeed in the war in Ukraine into a full-blown domestic crisis, pitting a Russian president against a former convict and caterer turned mercenary boss, who once helped a beleaguered Russia on the battlefield but became a political liability for the Kremlin.

Earlier Saturday, with Prigozhin apparently in control of central Rostov-on-Don and initially refusing to back down, there appeared to be relatively few ways out of the crisis that would not involve clashes within Russia or risk a significant loss of civilian lives.

Regional officials along the major M-4 highway linking Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, about 600 miles north, had said that convoys of military equipment were barreling north on the highway and urged local residents to stay away.

Videos verified by the New York Times showed signs of active fighting along the highway south of the city of Voronezh, including helicopters and a destroyed truck along the road, after reports that Wagner fighters had entered the Voronezh region, which is halfway between Rostov and Moscow.

“We’re blockading the city of Rostov and going to Moscow,” Prigozhin had said in a video showing him in the company of armed men in the courtyard of the military headquarters.

In Moscow, where authorities had declared a “counterterrorism operation regime,” the mayor declared Monday would be a nonworking day and urged residents to avoid trips around the city, describing the situation as “difficult.”

Wagner’s moves spurred Putin to take to the airwaves Saturday morning with an emergency video address, warning that the country could spiral anew into a tragedy akin to the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, when “Russians were killing Russians and brothers were killing brothers.”

“We will not allow this to happen again,” Putin said. “We will protect our people and our statehood from any threats, including from internal betrayal.”

Putin, who did not mention Prigozhin by name in his recorded remarks, said that “inflated ambitions and personal interests” had led to treason, and he vowed the harshest punishment for anyone who had “consciously chosen the path of betrayal.”

Shortly before Putin’s remarks, footage surfaced on the messaging app Telegram showing Prigozhin in control of the Southern Military District headquarters, where he appeared to have two top Russian military officials surrounded by Wagner guards.

In the video, Prigozhin demanded to meet with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, and the country’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to end what he described as a “disgrace.”

“We came here,” Prigozhin says. “We want the chief of the general staff and Shoigu. So long as they are not here, we will be staying here.”

Throughout the video, Prigozhin sat casually between the two uncomfortable Russian officials – a deputy defense minister, Col. Gen. Yunus-bek Yevkurov, and a deputy military intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev – as he criticized the Russian military’s poor leadership in Ukraine.

Then Prigozhin abruptly paused the spiraling crisis with his announcement he would back down.

The situation created by Prigozhin initially seemed like a dramatic denouement for a man who spent years in prison during the Soviet era but rose to riches after making inroads with Putin in St. Petersburg in the 1990s and later winning government catering contracts, with some calling him “Putin’s chef.”

All the while, Prigozhin stayed in the shadows, until last year, when he stepped into the spotlight as Wagner took on a greater role in prosecuting Russia’s struggling war effort in Ukraine.

Prigozhin recruited thousands of fighters out of Russian prisons and spent months wresting control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut amid staggering losses, trying to show Putin that he could make progress on the battlefield at a time when the Russian military leadership could not.

The situation led to a harsh rivalry between Prigozhin and the Russian military leadership that burst out into the open as he released expletive-laden public videos assailing them for incompetence at a time when the Russian authorities criminalized “discrediting” the country’s armed forces.

The infighting between Prigozhin’s force and the Russian military had for months appeared untenable, with the expectation that Putin would ultimately take action to curb the disunity.

How exactly Prigozhin had planned to outmuscle Russia’s sprawling security services with what he claimed was a 25,000-strong force of Wagner fighters wasn’t clear.

By late Saturday, no units within the Russian military or police appeared to have defected to Wagner, and no prominent Russian officials had expressed open support for the mercenary group.

Top officials across Russia released comments supporting Putin, making the Wagner boss appear isolated. There was no independent confirmation of the size of the Wagner force, and some experts speculated it was far smaller than 25,000.