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The Ministry of Defense said, on Wednesday, that the mercenaries of the Wagner Group are completing the handover of their weapons to the Russian army, in a step that comes after Short private army mutiny Last month, she challenged the Kremlin’s authority.
Disarming Wagner reflects the authorities’ efforts to defuse the threat he poses and also appears to herald an end to the mercenary group’s battlefield operations in Ukraine.
The measures come amid continuing uncertainty The fate of Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin And the terms of the deal that ended the armed rebellion by granting amnesty to him and his mercenaries with permission to move to Belarus.
The Ministry of Defense said that among the weapons delivered were more than 2,000 pieces of equipment, such as tanks, missile launchers, heavy artillery and air defense systems, along with more than 2,500 metric tons of ammunition and more than 20,000 firearms.
The statement follows the Kremlin’s acknowledgment on Monday that Prigozhin and 34 of his senior officers met with President Vladimir Putin on June 29, five days after the mutiny. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wagner’s leaders had pledged loyalty to Putin and were ready to “continue to fight for the motherland”.
Putin said that Wagner’s forces must choose whether to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense, move to Belarus, or retire from the service.
The Kremlin’s confirmation of Putin’s meeting with Prigozhin, who led troops to march on Moscow to demand the removal of the country’s top military leaders, has raised new questions about the deal that ended the rebellion.
Putin denounced the rebellion as treason when it began and promised harsh punishment to those who took part in it, but the criminal case against Prigozhin was dropped hours later as part of the deal. At the same time, the head of the Wagner company appears to still face trial for financial wrongdoing or other charges.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal that ended the insurgency, said last week that his country had offered Wagner field camps, but noted that Prigozhin was in Russia and his forces remained in their camps. Lukashenko noted that Spread in Belarus It will depend on the decisions of Prigozhin and the Russian government.
During the rebellion, which lasted less than 24 hours, Prigozhin’s mercenaries quickly overran the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot before driving to within 200 km (125 mi) of Moscow. Prigozhin called it a “march of justice” to overthrow the military leaders, who demanded that Wagner sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense by 1 July.
The mutiny met little resistance and the guerrillas shot down at least six military helicopters and a command post aircraft, killing at least 10 of the pilots. When the deal was done, Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their camps.
The rebellion represented the biggest threat to Putin in more than two decades in power and badly weakened his power, although Prigozhin claimed the uprising was not aimed at the president but aimed at overthrowing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the army chief. General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
Both men kept their jobs. Many observers pointed out that even if Putin was not happy with their performance, Prigozhin’s request to oust them helped secure their jobs, because firing them would be seen as a concession to Boss Wagner.
At the same time, mystery surrounds the fate of General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine, who is said to have links to Prigozhin.
Surovikin has not been seen since the start of the rebellion, when he was Post a video He urged an end to it, and two people in Washington familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly told the Associated Press in June that he was being held. Several Russian military bloggers also said he was arrested and interrogated.
Andrei Kartapolov, a retired general who heads the defense affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said on Wednesday that Surovkin was “resting” and “currently unavailable,” but did not give further details.
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