MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin has held Kremlin talks with Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his commanders to discuss the armed mutiny Wagner attempted to mount against the army\u2019s top brass, Putin\u2019s spokesman said on Monday.
\nThe meeting was first reported by French newspaper Liberation, which said Prigozhin had met Putin and the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and SVR Foreign Intelligence boss Sergei Naryshkin.
\nThe meeting, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was held on June 29, five days after the aborted mutiny, which is widely regarded to have posed the most serious challenge to Putin since he came to power on the last day of 1999.
\nPeskov told reporters that Putin had invited 35 people to the meeting, including Prigozhin and Wagner unit commanders, and that the meeting had lasted three hours.
\n\u201cThe only thing we can say is that the president gave his assessment of the company\u2019s (Wagner\u2019s) actions at the front during the Special Military Operation (in Ukraine) and also gave his assessment of the events of 24 June (the day of the mutiny),\u201d Peskov told reporters.
\nHe said Putin had listened to the commanders\u2019 own explanations of what had happened and had offered them further options for employment and combat.
\n\u201cThe commanders outlined their version of what happened (on June 24). They emphasized that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the supreme commander-in-chief. They also said that they are ready to continue fighting for the Motherland,\u201d said Peskov.
\nThe brief mutiny led by Prigozhin, in which Wagner fighters took control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and a military headquarters building, was defused in a deal brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
\nPutin, who likened the events to the turmoil which engulfed Russia in the run-up to the 1917 Russian Revolution, has since thanked his army and security services for averting chaos and civil war.
\nPrigozhin has said the mutiny was not aimed at overthrowing the government but at \u201cbringing to justice\u201d the army and defense chiefs for what he called their blunders and unprofessional actions in Ukraine.
\nPutin has so far kept Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in place, judging by appearances by both men on state TV \u2014 rejecting Prigozhin\u2019s appeals to sack them.
\nPrigozhin was meant to leave for Belarus under the terms of the deal that ended the mutiny. But Lukashenko said last week that Prigozhin was back in Russia and that Wagner fighters had not yet taken up an offer to relocate to Belarus, raising questions about the implementation of the agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin has held Kremlin talks with Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his commanders to discuss the armed mutiny Wagner attempted to mount against the army\u2019s top brass, Putin\u2019s spokesman said on Monday. The meeting was first reported by French newspaper Liberation, which said Prigozhin had met Putin and the head […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-342387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n