Russia president Putin met Wagner’s Prigozhin days after mutiny. Here's what they discussed
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. Putin agreed to allow the Wagner founder and his men to move to Belarus and to drop criminal cases of armed mutiny against them.
Russian authorities confirmed the death of several air force pilots shot down by Wagner forces during the rebellion. Two days before his meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner chiefs, Putin told 2,500 Russian troops assembled at the Kremlin that the country had averted “civil war." He later told a group of soldiers that the state budget had paid out some $3.25 billion in the past year to finance Wagner’s military operations in Ukraine and pay Prigozhin’s catering company for supplying food to the army. While the Kremlin sought to restore Putin’s authority by showing him meeting security officials and being cheered by ordinary Russians at public events, the US, Europe and China have been left puzzling over the political fallout from the rebellion that shattered his image as Russia’s invincible leader. Russian state media have also been waging relentless attacks on Prigozhin, portraying him as corrupt and casting doubt on Wagner’s effectiveness on the battlefield in Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s disclosure of the meeting came hours after Russia’s top military commander was shown on state television for the first time since the abortive mutiny that had aimed at ousting him. Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who’s in charge of Russia’s war operations in Ukraine, was shown in a brief video receiving battlefield reports from officials. Putin appointed Gerasimov as overall commander of Russia’s invasion force in January in place of General Sergei Surovikin, who hasn’t been seen in public since the Wagner rebellion ended.
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