The Kremlin said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin on June 29, five days after the mercenary group’s brief revolt against the Russian military.
“Indeed, the president had such a meeting, he invited 35 people to it—all the commanders of the detachments and the management of the company, including Prigozhin himself,” Kremlin spokespecton Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to Russian newswire Interfax. “This meeting took place in the Kremlin on June 29, it lasted almost three hours.”
Peskov added that during the meeting Prigozhin offered an “assessment” of Wagner’s actions on the battlefield in Ukraine and “of the events of June 24.” According to the Kremlin spokesperson, Putin “listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them options for further employment and further use in combat.”
The Wagner uprising began on Friday, June 23 when Prigozhin marched his columns of mercenaries into the Russian city of Rostov near Ukraine’s front lines. Prigozhin said his fighters “blockaded” the town “without firing a single shot.”
It ended the next day, after a deal was reportedly struck by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko that Prigozhin’s mercenaries would receive immunity, and that charges brought against Prigozhin himself would be dropped, once he turned his columns away from their subsequent march toward Moscow. Before turning back, some 8,000 of Prigozhin’s mercenaries had come within 125 kilometers of the capital city, according to British Intelligence.
Despite a reported stipulation in the deal that Prigozhin leave Russia for Belarus, this past Thursday Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg, Russia and his mercenaries were in the camps where they stayed before their two-day uprising.
Peskov at the time had said the Russian government didn’t know where Prigozhin was, asserting that the Kremlin had “neither the means nor the wish” to ” follow his movements.”
The failed rebellion represented the biggest threat to Putin’s authority in his more than two decades in power.
Peskov said Monday that Prigozhin had offered his unconditional support to Putin during their June 29 meeting in Moscow.
