Moscow (EFE) exile in Belarus, reports the Kommersant newspaper.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office opened the case under Article 279 of the Russian Criminal Code on Friday night, when Prigozhin and his men announced that they had crossed from Ukraine into the Russian border in the southern Rostov region and had initiated a “march for justice” to Moscow after denouncing an attack by the Russian Army against a mercenary camp in the Russian rear.
Despite the fact that formations like Wagner are prohibited by Russian law, midway through the invasion of Ukraine, it became the main assault detachment of Russian forces fighting on Ukrainian soil.
Tension between Prigozhin and Shoigu
The head of the Wagner Group denounced the disastrous management of the Russian military leadership, headed by the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, Valeri Guerasimov, in the war in the neighboring country, which, he said, had cost the lives of some “100,000 Russian soldiers”.
The agreement reached by Prigozhin with Moscow
After announcing early Saturday the seizure of the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, headquarters of the General Staff of the Southern Military District of Russia, and a column of mercenaries approaching 200 kilometers from Moscow in the afternoon, the mediation of the Belarusian president , Alexandr Lukashenko, managed to stop the rebellion.
The agreement reached with Prigozhin, who then withdrew with his men from Rostov-on-Don and throughout Sunday also from the Moscow and Voronezh regions (through which the highway connecting the south to the capital passes), consisted of commanding to the businessman in exile in Belarus in exchange for the criminal charge being withdrawn, for which he could be sentenced to between 12 and 20 years in prison.
The pact also included that the mercenaries who joined their boss’s uprising would not be prosecuted and that those combatants who had not directly participated in it could sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense and subordinate themselves to the command of Shoigu and Gerasimov.
Both Shoigu and Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered all Russian “volunteer” units to sign a contract with Defense until July 1, something Prigozhin had flatly rejected before the uprising.
It is currently unknown where Wagner’s boss is located.