President Putin: Russia Dodged Civil War

MOSCOW (AFP) -- President Vladimir Putin aimed to rally Russia’s military and security services Tuesday, telling them they halted a slide into civil war when Wagner mercenaries rebelled and marched on Moscow.

“You de facto stopped civil war,” Putin told troops from the defense 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 honorably fulfilled their orders and their military duty,” Putin said.
Putin said Wagner’s ordinary fighters had seen that “the army and the people were not with them.”
Russian officials have been trying to put the crisis behind them for three days, with Yevgeny Prigozhin due to go into exile in Belarus, the FSB dropping charges against rank-and-file Wagner troopers and the military preparing to disarm the group.
Prigozhin is a former Kremlin ally and catering contractor who built Russia’s most powerful private army.
“Preparations are underway for the transfer of heavy military equipment from the private military company Wagner to units of the Russian armed forces,” the defense ministry said.
Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko, usually seen as a junior partner to Putin, is seeking credit for stepping in to mediate Wagner’s U-turn on the road to Moscow and by Tuesday he has criticized Russia’s handling of the issue.
The feud between Wagner and the army had escalated for months, with Prigozhin making increasingly scathing statements against the generals’ handling of the offensive in Ukraine, blaming them for thousands of Russian losses.
“We missed the situation, and then we thought that it would resolve itself, but it did not resolve,” Lukashenko said.
“Two people who fought at the front clashed, there are no heroes in this case,” he added, in an apparent reference to the Wagner chief and his rival, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Lukashenko said he had ordered Belarus’s army to combat readiness in case of disaster in its larger neighbor and main ally, adding that if Russia had collapsed “we would all die”.
Speaking to German media outlets, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the revolt held “no major significance” and said of Putin: “If someone speculates that he could fail or be replaced, then he does not understand the Russian people and Russian power structures.”
In his address, Putin also stressed that the revolt had not forced Russia to withdraw any of its units from Ukraine, where fighting continued as Kyiv’s brigades pursued their counteroffensive in their nation’s east and south.
“All military formations continued to wage a heroic fight at the front,” Putin noted.
The bloody conflict is now 16 months old, with mass casualties on both sides and a rising civilian toll.