In a televised address late last night, Putin said: "Any blackmail or way to bring confusion to Russia is doomed to failure ... I made steps to avoid large bloodshed." Without mentioning Prigozhin by name, he said: "The organisers of the rebellion, having betrayed their country, their people, betrayed those who were drawn into the crime, pushed them, pushed them to death, under fire, to shoot at their own.
"It was precisely this outcome fratricide that the enemies of Russia wanted: neo-Nazis in Kyiv, and their western patrons, and all sorts of national traitors. They wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, to kill military personnel and civilians, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would choke in bloody civil strife. They rubbed their hands, dreaming of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counteroffensive, but they miscalculated."
Putin appeared to suggest the Wagner group would still be shut down, saying its fighters had the choice to sign a contract with the ministry of defence or relocate to Belarus as part of a settlement with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. "The majority of Wagner commanders and fighters are patriots. They were used covertly against brothers-in-arms," he said.
Putin's unscheduled appearance came just hours after Prigozhin issued a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and denied that he had sought to topple the Russian president.
Prigozhin said the uprising had shown there were "serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country" and that "society demanded it" because of the failures of Russia's military leadership.
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