After his first address to the nation Monday night following the weekend’s Wagner riots, the Russian president spoke again, this time while paying tribute to Russian security forces.In front of 2,500 Russian troops, Vladimir Putin praised his troops for how they responded to a mutiny by a paramilitary group.
“The Constitution, you protected the lives and liberties of our citizens. You kept our motherland intact. “You practically prevented a civil war,” Putin said.
“Faced with a difficult situation, you clearly acted in a well-coordinated manner, proving your loyalty and military commitment to the people of Russia, showing responsibility for the fate of the motherland and its future,” he added.
The Russian president said security forces were “unmoved” in response to the Wagner Group’s insurgency and insisted there was no need to move military units from the frontline of the war with Ukraine.
“They did not hesitate and fulfilled the honorable order and their military duty,” Putin said.
Along with several members of the Kremlin, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin insisted that “the Russian people and the army are not on the side of the rebels,” referring to Wagner’s mercenaries.
Putin concluded his speech with a minute’s silence in honor of the pilots of the planes shot down by the Wagner group during the 24 hours of the uprising, noting that they had shown “courage and self-sacrifice”.
There is no official record of how many pilots died or how many planes were shot down during the Wagner Rebellion. Vladimir Putin guarantees that there will be no civilian casualties during the advance of the paramilitary group towards Moscow on Saturday.
The Kremlin says Putin’s leadership has not been shaken
The Kremlin on Tuesday denied last weekend’s Wagner riots had undermined Putin’s authority, saying such claims had “no impact on reality”.
Many Western leaders, particularly those from the United States and the European Union, have argued that the mercenary insurgency exposes weaknesses in Putin’s government and is the worst blow to his power since he took office in 2000.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disagreed with the comments, saying “there is a lot of hysteria among experts, pseudo-experts, political scientists and pseudo-politicians.”
“It’s also spreading through some crazy new media and the internet. It has nothing to do with reality,” he added.
Peskov, for his part, told journalists that the uprising only proved “the strength of the community’s unity around the president.”
“The level of solidarity among society, political parties, the military, representatives of civil society, religious leaders, believers and others around the president is very high,” a Kremlin spokesman said.Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Tuesday that it had dropped criminal charges against the Wagner paramilitary group led by Evgueny Prigozhin. Russian agencies also announced that the group would hand over its heavy military equipment to the Defense Ministry.
Prigozhin reached an agreement with the Kremlin on Saturday, mediated by the Belarusian president, establishing that Wagner’s leader was exiled in Belarus in exchange for immunity for himself and his mercenaries.
Prigozhin’s whereabouts are unknown, but some Belarusian media reported that a private jet belonging to Prigozhin landed in Belarus on Tuesday morning. However, neither he nor the Belarusian authorities confirmed this data.
w/ agencies
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