“Many nodded when I said that,” Putin wrote in the daily Kommersant, describing a meeting in the Kremlin with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private army. But it was also Prigozhin who rejected the offer. “No, the men don’t agree with such a decision,” he said, according to Putin.
The Kremlin chief admits indirectly in the interviewthat the Russian leadership in the war against Ukraine knowingly backed an illegal organization. “We don’t have a law on private military organizations… The group exists, but legally it doesn’t exist,” said the Kremlin chief.
The Wagner mercenary force fought for months alongside regular Moscow troops in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. She gained notoriety through the months of fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
At the end of June, after an alleged attack by Russian troops on the Wagner camp, Prigozhin had the city of Rostov-on-Don occupied and sent military columns towards Moscow. At the time, Putin spoke of “treason.” Shortly before Moscow, after negotiations with the Kremlin, in which Belarus’ ruler Alexander Lukashenko acted as mediator, Prigozhin ordered the withdrawal.