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Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his top mercenaries and spent hours questioning them just days after their failed armed rebellion last month, according to the Kremlin.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the three-hour meeting occurred on June 29 and involved 35 people — including all senior commanders from Prigozhin’s private army, which had been paid by Moscow to fight alongside troops in Russia’s Ukraine invasion.
The meeting came two days after Putin had publicly announced that charges against Prigozhin would be dropped, an about-face that came after proclaiming he and his cohorts would be “brought to justice” for the aborted coup attempt.
In it, the Russian president offered what Peskov called an “assessment” of Wagner’s actions on the battlefield in Ukraine and “of the events of June 24” — referring to the mercenary group’s short-lived mutiny targeting Russia’s top military brass.
Putin also “listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them options for further employment and further use in combat,” Peskov told reporters, according to the Russian state-run news agency Interfax.
“The commanders themselves presented their version of what happened. They stressed that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the commander-in-chief, and also said that they are ready to continue to fight for their homeland,” Peskov said. “That is all we can say about this meeting.”
Prigozhin had a long-standing feud with Russia’s military leaders, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, over their handling of the war in Ukraine, which culminated in an armed insurrection late last month that saw Wagner fighters seizing control of the city Rostov-on-Don and marching toward Moscow.
Prigozhin, 62, pulled the plug on the mutiny in the 11th hour after a deal was struck allowing him to go into exile in Belarus.
The Wagner chief’s whereabouts have been largely unknown since the botched rebellion.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told reporters last week that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus in June 27 but has since left, and that Wagner fighters had not yet taken up Putin’s offer to relocate to Belarus.
Lukashenko claimed that Prigozhin was now back in his native St. Petersburg, or possibly elsewhere in Russia.
Prigozhin is “absolutely free” and Putin will not “wipe him out,” Belarusia’s leader insisted.
Prigozhin was reportedly seen last week arriving at the St. Petersburg office of the FSB to collect his huge arsenal of weapons that had been confiscated by officials from his mansion during the rebellion, according to the independent outlet Fontanka.ru.
The news site also claimed that the nearly $111 million in cash and gold bars that had been removed from two vehicles linked to Prigozhin at the time of the mutiny have also been returned to him.
In the wake of the brief rebellion, Putin labeled Prigozhin a traitor, and the Kremlin had gone out of its way to discredit him by leaking embarrassing photos showing the mercenary boss wearing ridiculous wigs and fake beards.
With Post wires