Former President Donald Trump reacted on Saturday to the Wagner Group’s mutiny in Russia, which has now been de-escalated, as convoys of the private military company turned around and went back to their field camps.
On Friday, Prigozhin revolted against the Russian defense ministry and accused the Russian military of attacking his mercenary’s positions in Ukraine. Prigozhin, who was once an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that the Russian leader’s justifications for invading Ukraine were lies. In addition, the Wagner Group has been helping Russian forces with their military operations in the Russia-Ukrainian war that began last February.
Trump, who has repeatedly said that Russia would have never invaded Ukraine if he was still in office, reacted to Wagner’s rebellion and said that China and Russia were “natural enemies” until Joe Biden became president.
“A big mess in Russia, but be careful what you wish for. Next in may be far worse!” the former president wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The former president said in another Truth Social post on Saturday that “Biden will do about Russia whatever President Xi of China wants him to do. Remember, Hunter & Joe illegally took large amounts of money from both countries, but China right now is the bigger threat.”
Trump made his remark in an apparent reference to Hunter Biden‘s alleged business dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese companies that are currently being investigated as part of claims that President Biden was involved in a bribe scheme.
“China & Russia, until Biden came along, have always been natural enemies, with China wanting large portions of largely unpopulated Russian land to have for their much larger population. This is China’s heretofore unthinkable opportunity, much bigger than Taiwan, which to President Xi, can wait!” Trump added in his post.
Meanwhile, Wagner Group’s mutiny raised concerns about, what Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, described as a “staged coup d’état.”
“The development of events shows that the actions of those who organized the military rebellion fully fit into the scheme of a staged coup d’état” he said, according to Russian media. “The world will be brought to the brink of destruction, if the nuclear weapons are in the hands of bandits, the crisis will not be limited to one country.”
An emergency meeting was held in a morning call on Saturday in which foreign ministers of the G7 and the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy discussed the situation in Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted.
Spoke today with G7 Foreign Ministers and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to discuss the ongoing situation in Russia. The United States will stay in close coordination with Allies and partners as the situation continues to develop.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) June 24, 2023
The advance toward Moscow ended by Saturday afternoon, according to Prigozhin who said that his convoys are turning around. Putin’s top ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, was part of negotiations to de-escalate the situation. Prigozhin ended up accepting a proposal to stop the group’s advancement inside Russia, among other de-escalation steps, according to Lukashenko’s press service.
“They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan,” Prigozhin said in a voice recording that he posted on his Telegram channel.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s press team via email for comment on the situation in Russia.
