Putin says Wagner paramilitaries paid billions by Russian state
Militia founder Yevgeny Prigozhin confirmed to be in Belarus after deal to end mutiny
The Russian state paid billions of dollars to the Wagner paramilitary group, president Vladimir Putin has said, as more details emerged of the deal that ended last weekend’s mutiny.
Putin admitted for the first time on Tuesday — after years of Kremlin denials — that Wagner had been “completely financed” by the state, with Rbs86bn ($1bn) in payments made from May 2022 to May 2023 and a further Rbs110bn in insurance payouts.
His comments came as Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin was confirmed to be in Belarus by the country’s president and as the Russian defence ministry announced it was taking control of the paramilitaries’ heavy weapons.
Putin is now moving to subsume the group into the official military after Prigozhin’s abortive march on Moscow on Saturday.
In addition to the direct payments to Wagner, Putin said Concord, Prigozhin’s catering company, received a further Rbs80bn in army catering contracts.
“I hope nobody stole anything, or didn’t steal much, but we’ll sort this out,” Putin added.
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal that ended the insurrection, said “security guarantees . . . were provided” to assure Prigozhin’s safe passage from Russia, adding that the Wagner founder “is in Belarus today”.
Lukashenko said Wagner’s fighters had returned to base camps in the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, days after they took control of the Russian city of Rostov and marched towards Moscow in an unprecedented test of Putin’s authority.
The developments on Tuesday came as Putin sought to reassert control after striking what even many hardline supporters of his war in Ukraine have claimed are embarrassing concessions to Wagner.
The FSB, Russia’s main security service, said it had closed its investigation into the weekend rebellion because the participants had “ceased the activities directly aimed at committing the crime”, according to state newswire Ria Novosti.
While in the immediate aftermath of the failed insurrection the Kremlin had said the charges would be dropped, they had subsequently remained in force, in an apparent bid to put pressure on Wagner to abide by the deal.
Some of Putin’s supporters have expressed disappointment at the Russian president’s about-face, choosing to let Wagner off without charges even after the paramilitaries seized a southern military headquarters and marched most of the way to Moscow, killing at least 13 Russian servicemen in the process.
The decision not to proceed with charges over the country’s first coup attempt in three decades was a significant turnaround after Putin had denounced Prigozhin for a “stab in the back”.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, said the Russian leader had decided not to prosecute Prigozhin to avoid bloodshed.
“There was a desire not to let the worst-case scenario happen,” Peskov said on Tuesday. “There were certain promises, the agreements are being realised.” Putin “always keeps his word.”
Putin spent Tuesday meeting with soldiers and security service officers, praising them for what he said was their role in stopping the uprising even as some of their commanders admitted they had done little.
At a ceremony outside the Kremlin’s ornate medieval Orthodox Christian churches, Putin said Russia’s security forces had “essentially stopped a civil war” and held a minute of silence for the pilots killed resisting paramilitary group Wagner’s advance on Saturday, saying they had “fulfilled their duty with honour.”
The men, Putin said, had “stood in the way of unrest that would have inevitably resulted in chaos.”
Wagner did not immediately confirm whether it would surrender its weapons to the Russian defence ministry, whose leaders have been the main target of Prigozhin’s ire for months as the invasion of Ukraine sputtered.
After attending Putin’s speech at the Kremlin on Tuesday, Viktor Zolotov, head of the national guard and the president’s former bodyguard, said they had discussed giving his units heavy weaponry.