The Wagner Group private military company is returning to its “field camps,” the PMC leader Evgeny Prigozhin announced late on Friday. His units staged a mutiny overnight, seizing control of multiple military and administrative installations in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, as well as launching an advance towards Moscow.
The insurrection had reached the brink of major bloodshed, Prigozhin said, explaining that Wagner’s advancing columns will return to their camps “according to plan.”
“They wanted to disband PMC Wagner. On June 23, we went on a March of Justice in a day. We advanced on Moscow just 200km short, and during this time we did not shed a single drop of the blood of our fighters,” he claimed.
During the mutiny, however, the private military outfit reportedly downed multiple aircraft and repeatedly skirmished with Russian forces.
“Evgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of President Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of the armed men of Wagner in Russia and to take further steps to de-escalate tension,” Belarus’ presidency said in a statement. It added that Prigozhin had been offered “an advantageous and acceptable option for resolving the situation, with security guarantees for the Wagner PMC fighters.”
The Wagner commander himself, however, has not mentioned the talks with Lukashenko in his latest statements.
