Putin Won’t Let Wagner Leader Prigozhin Just Walk Away: NATO Source

It’s unlikely rebel mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin will just be allowed to walk away from his aborted mutiny, NATO sources have told VICE News, as Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russia’s security forces they’d prevented a civil war.

Wagner leader Prigozhin has now arrived in Belarus according to its president, Alexander Lukashenko, after he agreed to leave Russia for its ally and neighbour after calling off a rebellion by forces under his command.

Wagner will escape prosecution for the short-lived mutiny on Saturday after the FSB security service said criminal charges for armed insurrection were being dropped, while Wagner is handing over heavy weapons and equipment to the Russian military. Its fighters can either enlist with the regular Russian army if they didn’t actively take part in the rebellion, or join Prigozhin in Belarus, under the terms of a deal that ended the mutiny.

But Western officials told VICE News they didn’t believe Prigozhin would just be allowed to live in exile, or that there would be no consequences for other senior Wagner figures such as co-founder and commander Dmitry Utkin. 

“There’s too many missing pieces for us to really assess things, it feels like the situation froze in time and nobody is certain what to do,” a senior NATO official not authorised to speak on the record told VICE News. “That appears to be Putin’s recent weakness, not being engaged at key moments, preferring to let others fight things out. Well that backfired and now his regime looks even weaker than it did over Ukraine.”

“What happens to [Prigozhin] and Utkin will tell us a lot,” said the official. “I can’t imagine a timeline where Putin allows these two to walk away but I also can’t imagine a timeline where this happened in the first place.”

Wagner fighters, considered some of the best equipped and trained of Russia’s troops, seized Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people and home to the region’s most critical military base on Saturday. Prigozhin then announced Wagner’s forces would drive to Moscow to remove the country’s military leadership. 

Chaos ensued. With most of the Russian military focused on Ukraine, Wagner forces encountered limited resistance even as panicking Moscow security officials cut highways and bridges to slow the mercenary army’s advance. There were clashes with the Russian army along the way, and Wagner is believed to have shot down several attack helicopters and at least one fixed wing plane during the fighting, killing 13 Russian military pilots. Arriving within 120 miles (200 km) of the capital, an apparent deal brokered by Belarusian President Lukashenko, widely seen as a puppet for the Kremlin, stopped the Wagner advance in exchange for amnesty for Prigozhin and his men.

Addressing the military on Tuesday, Putin told them they “essentially prevented a civil war”. He said: "I would like to emphasise the fact that the country would have been plunged into chaos without you." 

He added that Russia has “always respected” Wagner fighters for their “huge amount of heroism,” and claimed that the group had been paid for by the Russian state at the cost of $1 billion in the last year. 

He also held a minute’s silence to honour the 13 Russian military pilots who died in the mutiny. 

This speech came after the Russian president addressed the nation on Monday night, in which he said the mutiny was destined to fail. “Any blackmail or way to bring confusion to Russia is doomed to failure,” he said. “I made steps to avoid large-scale bloodshed,” he said in the unscheduled TV address.

Meanwhile CNN reported that US spy agencies had shared detailed intelligence briefings that Prigozhin was planning a mutiny several days before it happened. The information was believed to have been so closely guarded that it was shared only with select allied powers. It reportedly included where and how Wagner was planning to advance, but not when.

The mutiny was launched after months of tensions between Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group and the Russian Ministry of Defence exploded into outright confrontations across southern Russia in the worst political and security crisis of Putin’s 23-year rule. 

NATO intelligence and defence officials are uncertain how the coming hours and days will play out.

The weekend agreement stipulated that Wagner members who participated in the mutiny would be pardoned, while Wagner fighters who stayed out of the conflict would be allowed to join the Russian army.

“It’s clear Putin and his security people were as shocked as we were. That leads to a chaotic response and waking up Monday wondering which promises you made can be broken,” said the NATO official. 

Western intelligence officials have long understood the depth and bitterness of the tensions between Wagner and the Russian Army leadership, in large part because Prigozhin has posted dozens of bombastic attacks on senior officials.  After using human-wave tactics of freed convicts to overrun much of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Wagner and Prigozhin came into open conflict with top officials over resources, ammunition and credit for the successful offensive.  But his care to avoid direct attacks on Putin’s authority – focusing on corrupt defence officials – made it confusing for analysts to decide how much was political bombast.

“We knew there was increasing trouble and something had to give but nobody expected this,” said the NATO official. “The US claims it had advanced warning but they didn’t share that with our service. They often seem to have the right answers just after major events.”

Speaking on Monday for the first time since attempting to invade Moscow on Saturday, Prigozhin said that he agreed to halt the operation and accept exile in Belarus to avoid bloodshed between Russians and the destruction of his paramilitary company. 

“We didn't march to overthrow Russia's leadership and turned around to avoid spilling the blood of Russian soldiers,” he said in an 11 minute statement released online. “We regret that we had to hit Russian aviation. Our march aimed to prevent the destruction of Wagner. We wanted to hold accountable those who made mistakes during the special military operation.”