The leader of the paramilitary group said Monday, June 26 in a first audio message after the end of his rebellion that his goal was to avoid being absorbed by the Russian army.
For the first time since he ordered his men to turn back less than 400 kilometers from Moscow on Saturday evening, Evgueni Prigojine spoke on Monday, June 26. Eleven minutes of audio recording broadcast on Telegram to convey a central message, repeated twice: “Our goal was not to overthrow the existing regime and the legally elected government.” For the warlord accustomed to insults, the tone is almost conciliatory, even if he cannot help but oscillate between justifications and provocations.
“Wagner was about to be dissolved and we protested against this decision”, he explains. Many observers believed as early as Saturday that the mutiny may indeed have been triggered by a law on volunteers announced in mid-June to force private military companies to sign a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense before July 1. This provision would have deprived the warlord of all his influence. Prigojine claims to have met his commanders in council, who would have almost unanimously refused to comply with this obligation. “Nobody agreed to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence, everyone knew it would amount to a total loss of our combat capabilities. Experienced fighters would be butchered.he says.
“It was then obvious that a lot of blood would be shed”
Contradictorily enough, Prigozhin also claims that his men were gathering their equipment in preparation for depositing it publicly in front of the Russian army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don on June 30. He maintains that his men were targeted at that time by a Russian attack, with rockets and helicopters, which would have killed around 30 in his ranks. No trace of this attack has yet been found, and the gathering of the equipment mentioned by Prigojine could also resemble the preparation of the columns for the mutiny.
To explain the impromptu end of his coup, early Saturday evening, the mercenary maintains the same story. His men would have stopped when “the first assault detachment deployed its artillery and began reconnaissance of the area. It was obvious then that a lot of blood would be shed.” And, he said again, the goal was not to to overthrow the government“, but of “place before their responsibilities the officers who through their unprofessional acts have committed a massive number of errors”. Understand, we didn’t blame Putin but the army. “The march highlighted serious security issues in the country, he insists. We blocked all military units that were in our way.”
The mercenary is invisible
His version of the facts also matches the official narrative, mentioning the mediation of the Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko, who “reached out and offered to find solutions for the legal continuation of the work of the Wagner Group”. The agreement negotiated by the latter provided in theory for the exfiltration of Prigojine to Belarus. But since leaving Rostov to applause, the mercenary has been invisible. According to the Telegram Brief channel, he arrived in Minsk, in the Green City hotel. However, the information has not been confirmed, either by the hotel or by the Belarusian authorities.
Despite the circumstances and his future disorder, Prigogine could not help showing off. “In twenty-four hours, we have covered the distance that corresponds to that which the Russian troops should have traveled on February 24, 2022 to reach Kyiv, he said. Had it been carried out by men with Wagner’s level of training, composure and preparation, the special operation might have lasted only a day. We gave a master class of what February 24 should have been like.”