In a shocking twist Russia has announced charges have been dropped against mercenary commander Yevgeny Prigozhin despite the Wagner leader staging a 24-hour rebellion that rocked Vladimir Putin and saw troops get within 120 miles of Moscow.
Putin had raged he would “crush” and “punish” the Wagner mercenary forces that carried out a rebellion against the Kremlin in a short-lived insurrection over the weekend.
But now Russia’s feared Federal Security Service, the FSB, has just announced it will not to prosecute Prigozhin and his fighters saying its investigation found that those involved in the mutiny “ceased activities directed at committing the crime” and with that and other “relevant circumstances,” the agency closed the case on Tuesday.
The whereabouts of mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin remain a mystery still after Putin once again blasted organisers of the weekend rebellion as traitors who played into the hands of Ukraine’s government and the West
The Kremlin has said Prigozhin would be exiled to neighboring Belarus, but neither he nor the Belarusian authorities have confirmed this. An independent Belarusian military monitoring project Belaruski Hajun said a business jet that Prigozhin, 62, reportedly uses landed near Minsk on Tuesday morning.
Prigozhin’s short-lived insurrection over the weekend — the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in more than two decades in power — has rattled Russia’s leadership.
Putin on Monday night sought to project stability and control in a short, nationally televised address, in which he criticised the uprising’s “organisers,” without naming Prigozhin. He also praised Russian unity in the face of the crisis, as well as rank-and-file Wagner fighters for not letting the situation descend into “major bloodshed.”
