RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin vowed to punish “traitors” from the Wagner mercenary group, after its leader swore he would topple Moscow’s military leadership.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, released a series of messages from late yesterday into this morning, claiming that he and his mercenary troops had entered the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and taken control of its military sites.
Long-time Kremlin ally Prigozhin finally admitted last year he had founded the Wagner group and began a mass recruitment drive at Russia’s prisons for foot soldiers to fight in exchange for an amnesty.
Prigozhin rose from a modest background in Russia’s former imperial capital to become part of an inner circle close to Putin.
He spent nine years in prison in the final period of the USSR after being convicted of fraud and theft, and in the chaos of the 1990s, he began a moderately successful fast-food company.
He fell into the restaurant sector and opened a luxury location in Saint Petersburg whose customers included Putin, then making the transition from working in the KGB to local politics.
The company he founded at one point worked for the Kremlin, earning Prigozhin the nickname of “Putin’s chef”.
In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French president Jacques Chirac to dine at one of these restaurants.
“Vladimir Putin saw how I built a business out of a kiosk, he saw that I don’t mind serving to the esteemed guests because they were my guests,” Prigozhin recalled in an interview published in 2011.
His businesses expanded significantly to catering and providing school lunches. In 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory, which was built thanks to generous loans by a state bank.
In Moscow alone, his company Concord won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals for schools.
The former hotdog seller for years dismissed allegations he was linked with Wagner.
But last September, he conceded that he had founded the fighting force and opened headquarters in Saint Petersburg.
The United States, European Union, United Nations and others say the mercenary force has involved itself in conflicts in countries across Africa and the Middle-East in particular.
Wagner fighters allegedly provide security for national leaders or warlords in exchange for lucrative payments, often including a share of gold or other natural resources.
In July 2018, three journalists researching Wagner’s operations in the Central African Republic for an investigative media outlet were killed in an ambush.
Western countries have accused the private fighting group of coming to the aid of the military junta in Mali, in a move that contributed to France’s decision to end an almost decade-long military operation there.
Last year, a video surfaced of a bald man bearing a strong resemblance to Prigozhin in a prison courtyard, offering contracts to prisoners to fight in Ukraine with a chilling set of conditions.
“If you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you, we will regard it as desertion and will shoot you,” said the man.
“No one gives themselves up,” he said, adding that recruits should have grenades on them in case of capture.
“If I were a prisoner, I would dream of joining this friendly team in order to be able not only to redeem my debt to the Motherland, but also to repay it with interest,” Prigozhin’s company Concord cited him as saying.
In eastern Ukraine, the mercenary unit has been spearheading Russia’s costly battles.
It had been at the forefront of the months-long assault for Bakhmut, capturing the site for Russia, but at huge losses.
For months, Prigozhin has been locked in a power struggle with the military top brass, blaming them for his troops’ deaths in eastern Ukraine.
He has repeatedly accused them of failing to equip his private army adequately, of holding up progress with bureaucracy, while claiming victories won by Wagner as their own.
In a video released by his team last month, Prigozhin stood next to rows of bodies he said were those of Wagner fighters.
He accused Russia’s regular military of incompetence and of starving his troops of the weapons and ammunition they need to fight.
“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said at the time.
“The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”
Yesterday, Prigozhin’s anger appeared to boil over, as he accused Moscow’s military leadership of ordering strikes on Wagner’s camps and killing a large number of forces.
He said they had to be stopped and vowed to “go to the end”.
He later claimed his forces had downed a Russian military helicopter.
Hours later, the leader of the mercenary group said he had military sites in southern Russia’s Rostov-on-Don “under control”.
A port city located just over 100 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, Rostov-on-Don is the headquarters of Russia’s southern military command.
The sound of ambulance and police sirens filled the air of the city today where the Wagner mercenary force said it had taken over key facilities.
At a major intersection in the city centre, an armoured car with a machine gun and around a dozen men in military fatigues with silver armbands could be seen.
Armoured personnel carriers and tanks were positioned in other parts of the centre, including outside a toy shop and a circus, journalists in the city reported.
Passers-by stopped to look at the military vehicles, including transport trucks, and more armed men with silver armbands carrying rifles in resting positions.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has said his troops had taken control of Russia’s main military command centre for Ukraine operations as well as an airbase in the city, vowing to topple Moscow’s top military leaders.
He said he commanded around 25,000 fighters.
Regional governor Vasily Golubev called on residents not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary and said any planned mass gatherings in the city had been cancelled.
He also asked the public not to use the M4 motorway — the main road connection between Moscow and southern Russia — as sections have been closed and large queues of cars have formed along it.
The Kremlin had said overnight that “measures are being taken” against the mutiny.
Russia has tightened security in Moscow and several regions such as Rostov and Lipetsk.
Putin has called the Wagner mutiny a “deadly threat” to Russia and urged the country to unite.
Branding the action by Wagner mercenaries as “treason”, he vowed “inevitable punishment”.
The Russian President added: “All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment.
“The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”
The rebellion marks the most serious challenge yet to Putin’s long rule and Russia’s most serious security crisis since he came to power in late 1999.
It would divert attention and resources away from the battlefields in Ukraine, at a time when Kyiv is in the midst of a counteroffensive to seize back territory.
Ukraine’s army has said it was “watching” the infighting between Prigozhin and Putin.
Moscow meanwhile has warned that Kyiv’s army was seizing the moment to concentrate its troops “for offensive actions” near Bakhmut.
The significance of the mutiny was also not lost on world leaders, with leaders of the United States, France and Germany all saying that they are watching developments closely.
-With additional reporting from Diarmuid Pepper and Press Association
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