He said Russia‘s enemies would have taken advantage of the situation if mutiny had succeeded.
“You de facto stopped civil war,” Putin told troops from the defence ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry gathered for a televised address in a Kremlin courtyard and a minute’s silence for airmen slain by Wagner.”In the confrontation with rebels, our comrades-in-arms, pilots, were killed. They did not flinch and honourably fulfilled their orders and their military duty,” Putin said.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Kremlin ally and catering contractor who built Russia’s most powerful private army, has boasted – with some support from news footage – that his men were cheered and welcomed by civilians during his short-lived revolt.
However, Putin insisted that Wagner’s ordinary fighters had seen that “the army and the people were not with them.”
Last week, Russian mercenary fighters surged most of the way to Moscow before their leader said they had agreed to turn back to avoid bloodshed.
04:39
VIDEO: How Wagner Group’s revolt against Russia took a U turn within 24 Hours
‘Russia paid $1 billion to Wagner group over last year’
Putin said Tuesday that Moscow had paid out last year just over $1 billion to the Wagner mercenary group.
“The state paid to the Wagner group 86.262 billion rubles (around $1 billion) for salaries for fighters and incentive rewards between May 2022 and May 2023 alone,” Putin said during a televised meeting with law enforcement.
The Russian president affirmed that the authorities will investigate how money paid to Wagner and its boss was spent.
Russia drops charges against Prigozhin and others who took part in rebellion
Meanwhile, the Russian authorities said that they have closed a criminal investigation into the aborted armed rebellion led by Prigozhin and are pressing no charges against him or his troops.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said its investigation found that those involved in the mutiny, which lasted less than 24 hours after Prigozhin declared it Friday, “ceased activities directed at committing the crime,” so the case would not be pursued.
Putin ally says Wagner advanced so fast as focus was on defending Moscow
One of President Vladimir Putin’s allies said that mutineers from the Wagner mercenary group were able to advance so fast towards Moscow because forces loyal to the state had focused on bolstering the defences of the capital.
“It is very simple: we concentrated all our strength in Moscow,” said Zolotov, who served as head of the presidential bodyguard from 2000 to 2013 and was sometimes seen carrying an automatic weapon to protect Putin on dangerous trips.
(With agency inputs)