2023-06-27 13:36:18
After the armed uprising by the Wagner mercenary army, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin thanked the security forces for their efforts to protect Russia in another speech on Tuesday. Soldiers and employees of the secret services opposed the attempted revolt on June 24 and thus prevented a “civil war”. Putin also acknowledged that businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner army was fully funded by the Russian state.
“We financed this group completely,” Putin said on Tuesday, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, during a speech to uniformed officers on the Kremlin premises. Putin had described the Wagner people on Saturday as “traitors” in view of their uprising, which has since ended. According to Putin, the group received a total of 86.26 billion rubles (around 930 million euros) from the state budget from May 2022 to May 2023. Officially, the Wagner Army calls itself a private military company.
At the same time, Putin announced an investigation into the cash flows at the parent company of the Wagner army, Concord Holding. Because while the Wagner troupe was fully financed by the state, Concord also earned 80 billion rubles. “I hope nobody stole anything or, let’s say, stole a little bit,” said the Kremlin chief.
Putin also commented on the consequences that a successful uprising by the Wagner army could have had for the continuation of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. According to the Kremlin chief, much that had been achieved in the “special military operation” would have been “lost” in that case.
The Wagner units of the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin were one of the most powerful and brutal troops in the Russian war of aggression that had been going on for 16 months. In addition to many ex-prisoners, highly professional mercenaries with extensive combat experience are deployed in the private army.
Putin announced changes in the leadership of the Russian armed forces “in the near future”. The “backbone” of the armed forces leadership will in future be made up of people who have proven themselves in combat. This also includes the Air Force. The Kremlin chief did not comment on whether he is sticking with his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu.
Shoigu has been criticized for months for the failure of the aggressive war against Ukraine and also had nothing to counter the uprising of Prigozhin – one of his greatest adversaries.
Soldiers and employees of the secret services opposed the attempted revolt on June 24 and thus prevented a “civil war”. “You defended the constitutional order, the life, security and freedom of our citizens, saved our homeland from tremors, effectively prevented a civil war,” Putin said in the speech, which was shown on state television. “We knew we were going to win, the insurgents wouldn’t have taken Moscow,” he said.
In his outdoor speech to hundreds of different security services, Putin also recalled the pilots who were killed in their attacks on the Wagner column on Saturday. The members of the Defense Department, the National Guard, the FSB, the Interior Ministry and the Presidential Security Service commemorated the dead with Putin in a minute’s silence. Wagner troops had shot down several helicopters and an airplane on Saturday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov sees the power structure in Russia after the uprising of the Wagner mercenary units as not shaken. There is now a lot of “ultra-emotional hysteria” among experts and “pseudo-experts,” he said on Tuesday, according to Russian news agencies. That has “nothing to do with reality”. “These events have shown how consolidated the society around the president is,” Peskov claimed.
After the armed uprising of the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner army, the criminal proceedings against him were dropped, as announced by the Kremlin. Peskov justified the impunity after President Putin announced on Saturday that the masterminds of the uprising would face “inevitable punishment”.
Putin “wanted to prevent the worst,” said Peskov. There was a “clear agreement” to avoid the worst scenario. Putin made “certain promises” and “guarantees” for this, which are now being implemented. According to Peskov, the head of the Kremlin wanted to meet with Russian journalists in the evening.
Prigozhin surprisingly stopped his march towards Moscow on Saturday after negotiations. According to his own statements, he wanted to prevent bloodshed among Russian soldiers and therefore turned back 200 kilometers from the Russian capital. He had also occupied the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and withdrew from there as well.
President Putin confirmed on Monday evening that his disgraced ex-confidant could find refuge with his fighters in Belarus. He called the renegade Wagner people “traitors”. It was initially unclear whether Prigozhin was already in Belarus. For the part of the Wagner squad loyal to Moscow, Putin offered to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry.
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