Putin thanks the nation for its unity after an unsuccessful rebellion in Wagner Mercenary

After an armed revolt over the weekend was put down less than 24 hours after it started, Russian President Vladimir Putin commended the country on Monday for its cohesion. The mercenary leader had earlier in the day boastfully justified his little uprising.

In his first public appearance since the uprising was put down, Putin also praised the majority of the mercenaries for keeping things from turning into “bloodshed.” He said that all required steps had been taken to safeguard the nation and its citizens from the uprising.

He cited “Russia’s enemies” as the cause and said that they “miscalculated.”

When the government on Monday published a video of Russia’s defence minister inspecting soldiers in Ukraine, the Kremlin also made an effort to depict stability.

The leader of the mercenary organisation, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said he wasn’t trying to start a revolution but rather was attempting to save Wagner, his own private military firm, from being destroyed. In an 11-minute message, he said simply, “We started our march because of an injustice,” providing no other information on his location or his objectives.

The Wagner Group commander and Russia’s military hierarchy have been at odds for the duration of the conflict, and this past weekend, mercenaries who had fled the Ukraine took control of a military command centre in a city in the south of Russia. After less than 24 hours on Saturday, they moved virtually unchallenged for hundreds of kilometres towards Moscow before going back.

According to the Kremlin, an agreement had been reached for Prigozhin and his forces to go to Belarus and earn amnesty. Although a well-known Russian news station on Telegram said he was in a hotel in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, there was no confirmation of his location on Monday.

On Monday, Prigozhin mocked the Russian military by referring to his march as a “master class” on how it ought to have conducted the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In addition, he made fun of the military for failing to defend Russia, citing security lapses that enabled Wagner to march unimpeded for 780 kilometres (500 miles) into Moscow.

What would finally happen to Prigozhin and his soldiers under the allegedly mediated accord by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was not made any clearer by the optimistic statement.

The only thing Prigozhin mentioned about Lukashenko was that he “proposed finding solutions for the Wagner private military company to continue its work in a lawful jurisdiction.” Although it wasn’t immediately obvious to whose jurisdiction he was referring to, it implied Prigozhin may retain his military force.