Tag: Rebellions and uprisings

Putin says he offered Wagner mercenaries the option to stay as a single unit

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said he offered the Wagner private military company the option of continuing to serve as a single unit under their same commander after their short-lived rebellion, while some of the mercenaries were shown Friday in Belarus, possibly heralding the group’s relocation there.

Putin’s comments appeared to reflect his efforts to secure the loyalty of Wagner mercenaries, some of the most capable Russian forces in Ukraine, after the group’s brief revolt last month that posed the most serious threat to his 23-year rule.

The fate of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin remains unclear since the June 23-24 armed rebellion and new cracks have appeared in the Russian military as the war grinds through its 17th month and Ukraine presses a counteroffensive against the invading forces.

In remarks published Friday in the business daily Kommersant, Putin for the first time described a Kremlin event attended by 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin, on June 29, five days after the rebellion. He said he praised their efforts in Ukraine, deplored their involvement in the mutiny — which he previously denounced as an act of treason — and offered them alternatives for future service.

Putin told Kommersant that one option would see Wagner keep the same commander who goes by the call sign “Gray Hair” and has led the private army in Ukraine for 16 months. The commander, Andrei Troshev, is a retired military officer who has played a leading role in Wagner since its creation in 2014 and faced European Union sanctions over his role in Syria as the group’s executive director.

“All of them could have gathered in one place and continued to serve,” Putin told the newspaper, “And nothing would have changed for them. They would have been led by the same person who had been their real commander all along.”

Putin said many Wagner troops nodded in approval at the proposal, but Prigozhin, who was sitting in front and didn’t see their reaction, quickly rejected it, responding that “the boys won’t agree with such a decision.”

Putin didn’t mention where and in what numbers Wagner could be deployed under his offer, or say what proposal the forces eventually accepted, if any. He said nothing about Prigozhin’s role.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to elaborate on Wagner’s future while speaking with reporters Friday.

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Putin has previously said Wagner troops had to choose whether to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, move to neighboring Belarus or retire from service.

Speaking to Kommersant, Putin emphasized that “rank-and-file soldiers of Wagner have fought honorably” in Ukraine, adding that “it’s a cause for regret that they were drawn” into the mutiny.

Putin’s remarks were to a Kommersant reporter who has special access to the president. They appeared to be part of efforts to denigrate Prigozhin while trying to maintain control over Wagner mercenaries and secure their loyalty.

Putin previously denied any links between the government and Wagner, and acknowledged after the mutiny that Prigozhin’s company has received billions of dollars from the state. He noted that investigators would probe whether any of the funds had been stolen, a warning to Prigozhin that he could face financial crimes.

State-controlled media have posted videos and photos of Prigozhin’s opulent mansion in St. Petersburg, including stacks of cash, gold bars and fake passports. The images appeared to be part of a smear campaign against the Wagner chief, who has portrayed himself as an enemy of corrupt elites even though he owes his wealth to Putin.

Putin also said Wagner has operated without legal basis.

“There is no law on private military organizations. It simply doesn’t exist,” he told Kommersant, adding that the government and the parliament have yet to discuss the issue of private military contractors.

In the revolt that lasted less than 24 hours, Prigozhin’s mercenaries quickly swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot, before driving to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of Moscow. Prigozhin called it a “march of justice” to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who demanded that Wagner sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1.

The mutiny faced little resistance and fighters downed at least six military helicopters and a command post aircraft, killing at least 10 airmen. Prigozhin ordered his mercenaries back to their camps after striking a deal to end the rebellion in exchange for an amnesty for him and his men, and permission to move to Belarus.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal, has said Prigozhin was in Russia while Wagner’s troops were in their field camps. He didn’t specify the camps’ location but Prigozhin’s mercenaries fought alongside Russian forces in eastern Ukraine before their revolt and also have bases in Russia.

Lukashenko said his military could benefit from the private army’s combat experience, and Belarusian state TV broadcast video Friday of Wagner instructors training Belarusian territorial defense forces at a firing range near Asipovichy, where a camp offered to Wagner is located. A Belarusian messaging app channel alleged Prigozhin spent a night at the camp this week and posted a photo of him in a tent.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry didn’t say how many Wagner troops were in Belarus or specify if more will follow. Lukashenko has previously said it was up to Prigozhin and Moscow to decide on a move to Belarus. The Kremlin has refrained from comment.

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said most mercenaries have remained in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, but added that “at this stage, we do not see Wagner forces participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine.”

While the fate of Prigozhin remains cloudy, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Wagner was completing the handover of its weapons to the Russian military. That appeared to show attempts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat posed by the mercenaries and also seemed to herald an end to the group’s operations in Ukraine.

At the same time, new fissures have emerged in the military command. Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th army in the Zaporizhzhia region, a focal point in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, said he was dismissed after speaking out about problems faced by his troops in what he described as a “treacherous” stab in the back.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, refused to comment on Popov’s remarks, referring questions to the Defense Ministry that also hasn’t commented.

In the latest fighting, Ukraine said it shot down 16 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched overnight from Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. The presidential administration said at least four civilians were killed and 10 wounded since Thursday.

In southern Russia, three drones were destroyed late Thursday while approaching the city of Voronezh, regional Gov. Alexander Gusev said, adding there were no injuries or damage.

A drone also crashed and exploded in Kurchatov, where the Kursk nuclear power plant is located, without causing any damage to key facilities, said regional Gov. Roman Starovoit.

And three people were wounded when a car exploded in a residential area of Belgorod, near the Ukraine border, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded to suggestions this week by British Defense Minister Ben Wallace that Ukraine could show more “gratitude” for Western military aid. The remark was an “unfortunate misunderstanding on the part of the British minister,” Kuleba said.

“No one has any reason to accuse us of any ingratitude. But the truth is that, sorry, we are at war,” he said. “When we win, then I will say, ‘thank you, the weapons were enough,’ but while the struggle continues, the weapons are not enough.”

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Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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July 14, 2023
3 soldiers, 2 insurgents killed in shootout in southwest Pakistan, officials say

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Officials say three Pakistani soldiers and two insurgents have been killed in a shootout in the restive southwestern Baluchistan province

This is a locator map for Pakistan with its capital, Islamabad, and the Kashmir region. (AP Photo)

The Associated Press

QUETTA, Pakistan — Assailants attacked Pakistani soldiers conducting an operation in a restive southwestern province, and three of the soldiers and two insurgents were killed, local officials and the military said Thursday.

The military said in a statement the shootout happened Wednesday in the Baluchistan district of Sui, where the country’s main pipelines of natural gas are located. It was unclear who was behind the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on local separatist groups who have been blamed for previous such attacks.

Local officials said an operation to arrest those insurgents who fled after the shootout was underway.

The violence in Sui came hours after five militants attacked a security post in Zhob district in Baluchistan, killing nine soldiers. The military said those five attackers were killed.

Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by small separatist groups for more than two decades. Baluch nationalists initially wanted a share of the provincial resources, but later they initiated an insurgency for independence.

Though Pakistan says it has quelled the insurgency, the violence has continued in the province.

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July 12, 2023
Russia’s Defense Ministry says Wagner mercenaries are surrendering their weapons to the military

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MOSCOW (AP) — Mercenaries of the Wagner Group are completing the handover of their weapons to the Russian military, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday, a move that follows the private army’s brief rebellion last month that challenged the Kremlin’s authority.

The disarming of Wagner reflects efforts by authorities to defuse the threat it posed and also appears to herald an end to the mercenary group’s operations on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The actions come amid continued uncertainty about the fate of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and the terms of a deal that ended the armed rebellion by offering amnesty for him and his mercenaries along with permission to move to Belarus.

Russian lawmakers have approved a toughened version of a bill that outlaws gender transitioning procedures, with added clauses that annul marriages in which one person has “changed gender” and barring transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

Iran has summoned Russia’s ambassador after Moscow released a joint statement with Arab countries this week challenging Iran’s claim to disputed islands in the Persian Gulf.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has released a video of the country’s military chief. The video made public on Monday is the first time Gen.

The Kremlin says mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s commanders met with Russian President Vladimir Putin five days after staging a short-lived rebellion.

Among the weapons turned over were more than 2,000 pieces of equipment, such as tanks, rocket launchers, heavy artillery and air defense systems, along with over 2,500 metric tons of munitions and more than 20,000 firearms, the Defense Ministry said.

The statement follows the Kremlin’s acknowledgment Monday that Prigozhin and 34 of his top officers met with President Vladimir Putin on June 29, five days after the rebellion. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wagner’s commanders pledged loyalty to Putin and that they were ready “to continue to fight for the Motherland.”

Putin has said that Wagner troops had to choose whether to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, move to Belarus or retire from service.

The Kremlin’s confirmation that Putin met with Prigozhin, who led troops on a march to Moscow to demand the ouster of the country’s top military leaders, raised new questions about the deal that ended the rebellion.

Putin denounced the revolt as an act of treason when it started and vowed harsh punishment for those who participated in it, but the criminal case against Prigozhin was dropped hours later as part of the deal. At the same time, the Wagner chief apparently could still face prosecution for financial wrongdoing or other charges.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal that ended the mutiny, said last week that his country offered Wagner field camps but noted that Prigozhin was in Russia and that his troops remained at their home camps. Lukashenko noted that their deployment to Belarus would depend on decisions by Prigozhin and the Russian government.

During the revolt that lasted less than 24 hours, Prigozhin’s mercenaries quickly swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot before driving to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of Moscow. Prigozhin described it as a “march of justice” to oust the military leaders, who demanded that Wagner sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1.

The mutiny faced little resistance and fighters downed at least six military helicopters and a command post aircraft, killing at least 10 airmen. When the deal was struck, Prigozhin ordered his troops to return to their camps.

The rebellion represented the biggest threat to Putin in his more than two decades in power and badly dented his authority, even though Prigozhin claimed the uprising was not aimed at the president but intended to force the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.

Both men have kept their jobs. Many observers suggested that even if Putin wasn’t happy with their performance, Prigozhin’s demand for their ouster helped secure their jobs, since firing them would be seen as a concession to the Wagner boss.

At the same time, uncertainty surrounds the fate of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine who reportedly had ties to Prigozhin.

Surovikin hasn’t been seen since the rebellion began, when he posted a video urging an end to it, and two people in Washington familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly told The Associated Press in June that he has been detained. Several Russian military bloggers also said he has been detained and questioned.

Andrei Kartapolov, a retired general who heads the defense affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said Wednesday that Surovikin was “resting” and is “not currently available,” but wouldn’t elaborate.

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Associated Press writers Tara Copp and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed.

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July 12, 2023
Belarus says Wagner chief who staged mutiny is in Russia, raising questions about Kremlin’s strategy

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MINSK, Belarus — The mercenary leader who led a short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin is in Russia and his troops are in their field camps, the president of Belarus said Thursday, raising new questions about the deal that ended the extraordinary challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s claim could not be independently verified, and the Kremlin refused to comment on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s whereabouts. But Russian media have reported he was recently seen at his offices in St. Petersburg.

It was not clear if Prigozhin’s presence in Russia would violate the deal, which allowed the head of the Wagner Group military contractor to move to Belarus in exchange for ending the rebellion and a promise of amnesty for him and his troops. But the reports signaled that the agreement may have allowed him to finalize his affairs in Russia.

If that’s true, it could suggest the threat posed by Prigozhin has not yet been fully defused and that the Kremlin is treading carefully with him until it can figure out what to do with troops who may still be loyal to him. Putin has said that Wagner troops can join the Russian military, retire from service or move to Belarus.

But much about the the agreement, which was brokered by Lukashenko, remains murky.

Last week, Lukashenko said the mercenary leader was in Belarus, but on Thursday he told international reporters that Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg and could also travel to Moscow if he wishes, while Wagner’s troops were in their camps. He did not specify the location of the camps, but Prigozhin’s mercenaries fought alongside Russian forces in eastern Ukraine before their revolt and also have bases on Russian territory.

He also said that Prigozhin has been given back the cash and weapons that were confiscated by Russian authorities.

Asked where Prigozhin is, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shrugged off the question, saying that the Kremlin has neither the desire nor the means to track his movements — but reaffirmed that the deal that ended the mutiny envisaged his move to Belarus.

Lukashenko said his government offered Wagner, which has sent troops around the world to fight for Russia’s interests, the use of Belarusian military camps but that the company had not made a final decision.

The Kremlin has played down the fact that Prigozhin escaped punishment for his mutiny while other Putin critics have been met with harsh prison sentences, exile or even death, saying that the deal with the Wagner chief was necessary to avoid massive bloodshed.

The Belarusian leader shrugged off suggestions that Putin might order Prigozhin killed, saying: “If you think that Putin is so vicious and vindictive to finish him off, no, it’s not going to happen.”

On Wednesday, Russian online newspapers Fontanka and Izvestia posted videos and photos of Prigozhin’s opulent mansion in Russia’s second-largest city that showed stacks of cash and gold bullion. The images appeared to be part of the authorities’ efforts to denigrate Prigozhin, who has postured as an enemy of corrupt elites even though he has owed his wealth to Putin.

A photo hanging in the mansion showed a lineup of decapitated heads. In one published image, an oversized souvenir sledgehammer could also be seen with the inscription “for important negotiations.” The sledgehammer has become a symbol of Wagner after reports its troops used the tool to beat defectors to death.

The Russian media also published a collection of selfies that showed him posing in various wigs, fake beards and foreign uniforms, an apparent reflection of Wagner’s deployments to Syria and several African countries.

Asked if Prigozhin and his mercenaries would eventually move to Belarus, Lukashenko answered evasively that it would depend on the decisions of the Wagner chief and the Russian government.

The Belarusian leader said he doesn’t think the mercenaries’ presence in his country would lead to its destabilization and said any Wagner troops there would be required to sign a contract with Belarusian authorities that would outline conditions and limitations of their actions.

Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich argued, however, that Lukashenko could feel uneasy about Wagner’s presence on his turf. “If this structure rebelled against its master once, it can do it again and again and march on Minsk instead of marching on Moscow,” Karbalevich said.

The Belarusian president dismissed suggestions that the mercenaries could attack Ukraine from Belarusian territory, which Russian troops used as a staging ground ahead of their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has also maintained a military presence in Belarus.

During their short revolt, Prigozhin’s mercenaries quickly swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there before marching to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the Russian capital. Prigozhin described it as a “march of justice” to oust his longtime foes — Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the military’s general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, whose handling of the war in Ukraine he criticized.

The Wagner fighters faced little resistance, smashing occasional roadblocks. They also downed at least six helicopters and a command post aircraft, killing at least 10 airmen.

When the deal was struck, the Wagner chief ordered his troops to return to their camps.

The abortive rebellion represented the biggest threat to Putin in his more than two decades in power, exposing his weakness and eroding the Kremlin’s authority. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Shoigu and Gerasimov retained Putin’s favor after vanishing from public view during the mutiny, but so far they have kept their positions.

Lukashenko said he warned Prigozhin that he and his troops would be destroyed if they failed to make a quick deal to end their mutiny and that Belarus would send a brigade to help protect Moscow.

“It was necessary to nip it in the bud. It was very dangerous, as history shows,” Lukashenko said.

Asked about the deployment of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, Lukashenko said they are intended to deter any aggression against the country. Putin and Lukashenko both have said that some of them already have been moved to Belarus, and the Belarusian leader reaffirmed Thursday that a “certain number” of them have been flown to Belarus and the rest will be delivered before the year’s end.

Lukashenko said that Russia would consult him on any possible use of those weapons, adding that it could only happen in response to an act aggression by NATO against Russia or Belarus.

The Belarusian leader noted that “these weapons serve strictly defensive purposes.”

He added: “Don’t touch us, and we will never use these deadly weapons.”

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July 6, 2023
Palestinian attacker wounds 8 in Tel Aviv as Israel presses on with West Bank operation

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JENIN, West Bank — A Hamas militant drove his car into a crowded bus stop in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and began stabbing people, wounding eight in an attack praised by Palestinian militant groups as a response to Israel’s ongoing military operation in the occupied West Bank.

Police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters that an armed civilian shot and killed the assailant.

The attack came as Israeli troops pressed ahead with their hunt for Palestinian militants and weapons in the Jenin refugee camp, after military bulldozers tore through alleys and thousands of residents fled to safety. The two-day Palestinian death toll rose to 10.

The large-scale raid, which began Monday, was one of the most intense military operations in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades and comes amid a more than a yearlong spike in violence. More than 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, and Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 26 people.

The raid bore hallmarks of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s and came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure from his ultranationalist political allies for a tough response to recent attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last month that killed four people.

But the current violence is also different from the intense years of what was known as the second intifada, a period that claimed thousands of lives. It’s more limited in scope, with Israeli military operations focused on several strongholds of Palestinian militants.

The Israeli army said that fewer than 10 targets remained in its Jenin operation but gave no indication how long it would take to complete. Israel’s Channel 12 TV station quoted military officials as saying they expected to wrap up the offensive within 24 hours.

Islamist militant group Hamas praised the Tel Aviv attacker as a “martyr fighter” and said the attack was “heroic and revenge for the military operation in Jenin.” It was not immediately clear if the attacker was dispatched by the group or acted on his own. Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a large presence in Jenin, also praised the assault.

Israeli’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, identified the attacker as a Palestinian from the West Bank with no prior security record. Shabtai, the police chief, said that several people connected to the man were arrested but did not provide details.

Israel’s hard-line national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, rushed to the scene of attack. “We knew that terror would raise its head,” he said. He praised the civilian for killing the attacker and called for arming more citizens with guns, as he was heckled by an angry onlooker.

Earlier in the day, rubble littered the streets of Jenin and there were reports of damage to shops. Columns of black smoke periodically punctuated the skyline over the camp, which along with an adjacent town of the same name has been a flashpoint since Israeli-Palestinian violence began escalating in spring 2022. It was also a hotbed of Palestinian militant activity in the uprising in the early 2000s.

Jenin Mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi said that around 4,000 Palestinians had fled the Jenin refugee camp, finding accommodation in the homes of relatives and in shelters. Residents said there was no water or electricity in the camp.

Across the West Bank, Palestinians observed a general strike to protest the Israeli raid.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday that the two-day death toll rose to 10, with two more deaths reported overnight. The Israeli military has claimed all were militants, but did not provide details.

During Tuesday’s operations, the military said it seized weapons and explosives and demolished tunnels beneath a mosque in the refugee camp. Israeli media reported that the army had arrested at least 120 suspected Palestinian militants since Monday.

A spokesman for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Monday that Israel had launched the operation because some 50 attacks over the past year had emanated from Jenin.

The Palestinian self-rule government in the West Bank and three Arab countries with normalized ties with Israel – Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – condemned Israel’s incursion, as did the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Israel says the raids are meant to crack down on Palestinians militants and thwart attacks. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers.

Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people uninvolved in confrontations have also died.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

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July 4, 2023
Putin says Russia is ‘united as never before’ during Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting

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NEW DELHI — President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the Russian people were “united as never before,” as he sought to project confidence in the wake of a short-lived revolt, at a meeting of a rare international organization where he can find a sympathetic audience.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, hosted via videoconference by India, was Putin’s first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia and comes as he is eager to show that the West has failed to isolate Moscow over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Asian security grouping, founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances, also welcomed Iran as a new member, bringing its membership to nine nations.

Speaking by video link from the Kremlin, Putin praised the organization for “playing an increasingly significant role in international affairs, making a real contribution to maintaining peace and stability, ensuring sustainable economic growth of the participating states, and strengthening ties between peoples.”

He thanked the member states for supporting Russian authorities during the short-lived armed mutiny mounted by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, and said the West had turned Ukraine into “a virtually hostile state — anti-Russia.” Putin has frequently lashed out at the West for its support of Ukraine in the war.

The summit presents an opportunity for Putin to show that he’s in control after an insurrection that left some wondering about divisions among Russian elites.

“The Russian people are united as never before,” he said. “The solidarity and responsibility for the fate of the fatherland was clearly demonstrated by the Russian political circles and the entire society by standing as a united front against the attempted armed rebellion.”

Earlier speakers avoided directed references to the war, while bemoaning its global consequences.

In his opening speech, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of global challenges to food, fuel and fertilizer supplies but didn’t mention the war in Ukraine. Trade in all three has been disrupted by the war.

He also took a veiled swipe at Pakistan, saying the group shouldn’t hesitate to criticize countries that are “using terrorism as an instrument of its state policy.”

“Terrorism poses a threat to regional peace and we need to take up a joint fight,” Modi said without naming Pakistan. India regularly accuses Pakistan of training and arming insurgent groups, a charge that Islamabad denies.

In his speech, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced terrorism and defended his country’s role in the fight against it.

“While the sacrifices made by Pakistan in fighting terrorism are without parallel, this scourge continues to plague our region and remains a serious obstacle to the maintenance of peace and stability,” Sharif said. “Any temptation to use it as a cudgel for diplomatic point scoring must be eschewed.”

Sharif also hailed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, saying it could be a “game changer for connectivity, stability, peace and prosperity in the region.”

The SCO also includes the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, all former Soviet republics in which Russian influence runs deep. India and Pakistan became members in 2017. Belarus is also in line for membership.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that “the benefits of the official membership of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the SCO will be historic.”

Raisi’s speech, cited by the Iranian news agency IRNA, didn’t mention the war in Ukraine, but said that Iran believed that the SCO is in a prime position to promote political and economic cooperation.

Raisi expressed the hope that Iran’s membership would prepare the ground for improving collective security, respect for the sovereignty of member nations, sustainable development, and confronting environmental threats, IRNA said.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message that the summit was taking place amid growing global challenges and risks.

“But at a time when the world needs to work together, divisions are growing, and geopolitical tensions are rising,” he said.

“These differences have been aggravated by several factors: diverging approaches to global crises; contrasting views on nontraditional security threats; and, of course, the consequences of COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on members to work toward “long-term peace and stability in the region,” according to a readout of his speech posted by state broadcaster CCTV.

He said that China wants to “better synergize” the country’s Belt and Road Initiative — a trillion-dollar infrastructure investment project criticized in the West for burdening smaller countries with large amounts of debt — with other nations’ own development strategies and regional cooperation initiatives.

Days after his return from a high-profile visit to the United States, Modi on Friday had a telephone conversation with Putin about recent developments in Russia, India’s External Affairs Ministry said.

Modi reiterated calls for dialogue and diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine, ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said.

India has avoided condemning Russia for its war on Ukraine and abstained from voting on U.N. resolutions against Russia.

When SCO foreign ministers met in India last month, Russia’s war in Ukraine barely featured in their public remarks, but analysts say the fallout for developing countries on food and fuel security remains a concern for members of the group.

Even as the SCO continues to expand, the grouping remains at risk of competing interests or conflicts between member states.

India and Pakistan share a history of bitter relations, mainly over Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region that is split between them but claimed by both in its entirety, and they have fought two wars over it.

Meanwhile, New Delhi and Beijing are locked in a three-year standoff of thousands of soldiers stationed along their disputed border in the eastern Ladakh region.

And the SCO summit took place as Moscow relies more deeply on Beijing as its war in Ukraine drags on. This could irk New Delhi in the long run and complicate its relationship with Cold War ally Russia.

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Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Dasha Litvinova in Talinn, Estonia, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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July 4, 2023
Putin will speak with leaders of China and India in his first summit since the Wagner insurrection

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NEW DELHI — President Vladimir Putin will participate this week in his first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia, as part of a rare international grouping in which his country still enjoys support.

Leaders will convene virtually on Tuesday for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances from East Asia to the Indian Ocean.

This year’s event is hosted by India, which became a member in 2017. It’s the latest avenue for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to showcase the country’s growing global clout.

The group so far has focused on deepening security and economic cooperation, fighting terrorism and drug trafficking, tackling climate change and the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021. When the foreign ministers met in India last month, Russia’s war on Ukraine barely featured in their public remarks but the fallout for developing countries on food and fuel security remains a concern for the group, analysts say.

The forum is more important than ever for Moscow, which is eager to show that the West has failed to isolate it. The group includes the four Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in a region where Russian influence runs deep. Others include Pakistan, which became a member in 2017, and Iran, which is set to join on Tuesday. Belarus is also in line for membership.

“This SCO meeting is really one of the few opportunities globally that Putin will have to project strength and credibility,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute.

None of the member countries has condemned Russia in U.N. resolutions, choosing instead to abstain. China has sent an envoy to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and India has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

For Putin personally, the summit presents an opportunity to show he is in control after a short-lived insurrection by Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“Putin will want to reassure his partners that he is very much still in charge, and leave no doubt that the challenges to his government have been crushed,” said Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

India announced in May that the summit would be held online instead of in-person like last year in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where Putin posed for photographs and dined with other leaders.

For New Delhi at least, the optics of hosting Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping just two weeks after Modi was honored with a pomp-filled state visit by U.S. President Joe Biden would be less than ideal.

After all the fanfare Modi received from American leaders on his recent visit, “it would have been too soon (for India) to be welcoming Chinese and Russian leaders,” Kugelman said.

India’s relationship with Moscow has stayed strong throughout the war; it has scooped up record amounts of Russian crude and relies on Moscow for 60% of its defense hardware. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have aggressively courted India, which they see as a counterweight to China’s growing ambitions.

A key priority for India in the forum is to balance its ties with the West and the East, with the country also hosting the Group of 20 leading economies’ summit in September. It’s also a platform for New Delhi to engage more deeply with Central Asia.

“India glorifies in this type of foreign policy where it’s wheeling and dealing with everybody at the same time,” said Derek Grossman, an Indo-Pacific analyst at the RAND Corporation.

New Delhi, observers say, will be looking to secure its own interests at the summit. It will likely emphasize the need to combat what it calls “cross-border terrorism” — a dig at Pakistan, whom India accuses of arming and training rebels fighting for independence of Indian-controlled Kashmir or its integration into Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.

It may also stress the need to respect territorial integrity and sovereignty — a charge often directed towards its other rival, China. India and China have been locked in an intense three-year standoff involving thousands of soldiers stationed along their disputed border in the eastern Ladakh region.

Analysts say China, seeking to posture itself as a global force, is becoming a dominant player in forums like the SCO, where interest for full membership from countries like Myanmar, Turkey and Afghanistan has grown in recent years.

“The limitation with the SCO is that China and Russia are trying to turn it into an anti-Western grouping, and that does not fit with India’s independent foreign policy,” said Madan.

The SCO could also prove challenging for Washington and its allies in the long run.

“For countries uncomfortable with the West and their foreign policies, the SCO is a welcome alternative, mainly because of the roles Russia and China play. … I think that highlights just how relevant and concerning this group could be for a number of Western capitals, especially if it keeps expanding,” said Kugelman.

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July 3, 2023
Satellite photos, reports suggest Belarus is building an army camp for Wagner fighters

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Satellite images analyzed by The Associated Press on Saturday showed what appeared to be a newly built military-style camp in Belarus, with statements from a Belarusian guerrilla group and officials suggesting it may be used to house fighters from the Wagner mercenary group.

The images provided by Planet Labs PLC suggest that dozens of tents were erected within the past two weeks at a former military base outside Osipovichi, a town 230 kilometers (142 miles) north of the Ukrainian border. A satellite photo taken on Jun. 15 shows no sign of the rows of white and green structures that are clearly visible in a later image, dated Jun. 30.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his fighters escaped prosecution and were offered refuge in Belarus last week after Minsk helped broker a deal to end what appeared to be an armed insurrection by the mercenary group. The abortive revolt saw Wagner troops who had fought alongside Russia forces in Ukraine capture a military headquarters in southern Russia and march hundreds of kilometers (miles) toward Moscow, seemingly unimpeded.

Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said his country, a close and dependent ally of Moscow, could use Wagner’s experience and expertise, and announced that he had offered the fighters an “abandoned military unit” to set up camp.

Aliaksandr Azarau, leader of the anti-Lukashenko BYPOL guerrilla group of former military members, told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday that construction of a site for Wagner mercenaries was underway near Osipovichi.

Up to 8,000 fighters from Wagner’s private military force may be deployed in Belarus, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s border force told Ukrainian media Saturday. Speaking to the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, Andriy Demchenko said Ukraine would strengthen its 1,084 kilometer (674 mile) border with Belarus in response.

Lukashenko previously allowed the Kremlin to use Belarusian territory to send troops and weapons into Ukraine. He has also welcomed a continued Russian armed presence in Belarus, including joint military camps and exercises, as well as the deployment of some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons there.

Demchenko told Ukrainska Pravda on Saturday that as of this week, some 2,000 troops from regular Russian army units remained stationed in Belarus.

At a Friday evening gala marking the Belarusian Independence Day, Lukashenko said that the Belarusian armed forces could benefit from training by Wagner members, and asserted that the mercenaries were “not a threat” to Belarusians.

He also declared that he was “sure” Belarus would not have to use the nuclear weapons deployed to its territory, and would not get directly involved in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

“The longer we live, the more we are convinced that (nuclear weapons) should be with us, in Belarus, in a safe place. And I am sure that we will never have to use them while we have them, and the enemy shall never set foot on our soil,” Lukashenko said.

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July 1, 2023
Families of tens of thousands missing in Syria draw some hope from new UN push to find loved ones

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IDLIB, Syria — In her small apartment in opposition-held Idlib in northwest Syria, Umm Mohammed is depressed and lethargic. But when her phone rings or someone knocks on the door she becomes suddenly alert. Maybe, finally, her husband has come back.

In 2013, Syrian soldiers broke into the couple’s home in Damascus as they were having breakfast, she said. She and her husband had previously taken part in anti-government protests.

“They beat him up in front of my young daughter” and then took him away, said Umm Mohammed, or “mother of Mohammed,” the name of her oldest son. She did not want to give her own full name for fear the authorities would harm her husband if he is still alive.

The only news she has received about him since that day came in 2015, when someone claimed to have seen him in the Syrian military intelligence’s 248 Branch prison — which former detainees and human rights groups have called a torture center.

“When someone is martyred, they’re buried and you know they’re dead,” she said, sitting on floor cushions. “In this case, you don’t know and you’ll always be wondering.”

Her husband is among more than 130,000 people believed to have gone missing in Syria since the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad that quickly turned into a civil war. Their families, trapped in painful uncertainty for years, might now have reason for hope.

The U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to form an independent international institution to search for the missing in Syria in both government and opposition-held areas.

The resolution was adopted by the 193-member world body on a vote of 83-11 with 62 abstentions. The countries voting for the resolution included the United States and other Western nations. Syria and key allies Russia, Iran, and China opposed the move. Arab countries that in recent months rekindled ties with Damascus abstained, except for Assad skeptics Qatar and Kuwait, which endorsed the move.

Some of the missing are believed to be languishing in government prisons. Others were taken by non-state armed groups. Others are buried in mass graves, which have been found on both sides of the front line.

The newly created institution would collect information from families, Syrian civil society organizations, whistle blowers, U.N. agencies and through inquiries to the Syrian government and authorities in opposition-held areas.

The resolution gives three months for U.N. officials to set up the institution’s structure and start recruiting staff.

There have been long-standing demands to investigate the fate of the missing, from the families and from human rights activists.

Hanny Megally, a member of a commission set up by the U.N. in 2011 to investigate human rights violations in Syria, said he hopes a single team focusing on the missing could encourage more whistle blowers to come forward, and could collect scattered data from rights groups.

In recent years, whistle blowers and defectors have come forth with some information, including the so-called Caesar photos, a trove of 53,000 images taken in Syrian prisons and military hospitals. The photos showed the bodies of detainees with signs of torture.

A video shot in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon in 2013 revealed the fate of dozens of Syrians who went missing. The video showed Syrian security agents leading blindfolded men into a pit, shooting them and setting the bodies on fire.

The Caesar photos allowed some families to identify missing loved ones. The leak also enabled European courts to try and convict former Syrian military officers who were seeking asylum in European countries for their involvement in forced disappearances and torture.

Setting up an international body would be a significant move in a region scarred by war, where tens of thousands of families in neighboring countries are waiting for information about their loved ones.

In Lebanon, family members of some 17,000 people kidnapped by sectarian militias during its 1975-1990 civil war are dying of old age, never knowing the fate of their loved ones. In Yemen, despite recent prisoner swaps between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthi rebels, human rights groups say hundreds are still missing.

In Iraq, over 43,000 people remain missing since a U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, followed by a ferocious civil war and the rise of the Islamic State extremist group. The UN set up an investigation in 2017 into human rights abuses by the militant group, including enforced disappearances, which led to the discovery of over a dozen mass graves.

Setting up an investigative body for Syria’s missing “might set a precedent for addressing the suffering of different people in different parts of the world,” said Wafa Mustafa, whose father Ali disappeared in July 2013 in Damascus. Mustafa had joined her father, an outspoken Assad critic, in protests.

Mustafa, who welcomed the vote, is one of many Syrian civil society activists who have spent years campaigning for international action on the missing.

Investigating their fate should also pave the way for addressing other human rights issues in Syria, including the dire conditions for political prisoners. “A lot should be happening, a lot should be done in parallel to this institution,” Mustafa said.

In the Kurdish-held city of Qamishli in northeast Syria, Hamed Hemo believes that an investigation could uncover the fate of his missing son.

Hemo has turned his living room into a shrine for his son, Ferhad, a journalist who went missing after IS militants kidnapped him and a colleague, Masoud Aqil, in 2014. Aqil, released in a prisoner swap, relocated to Germany. Ferhad never came home.

“To this day our lives have completely changed,” Hemo said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “His mother once weighed 70 kilos (154 pounds), and she’s dropped to 40 (88 pounds).”

Islamic State’s so-called “caliphate” once stretched across large areas of Syria and Iraq, but the extremists lost their last hold on the land in 2019.

Thousands of captured IS fighters are held in prisons run by Kurdish-led forces who Hemo believes could provide information about the missing.

Umm Mohammad is less hopeful of getting information about her husband from Syrian authorities.

Assad has denied holding political prisoners, labeling the opposition as terrorists. Direct cooperation with Syria by investigators could also be difficult as it does not extradite its citizens.

“What’s he going say?” she wondered. “All those people I detained were killed under my custody?’”

—

Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Fay Abuelgasim contributed to this report from Beirut, and Hogir Al Abdo from Qamishli, Syria.

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June 30, 2023
Biden talks Supreme Court and Russia but also media and McCain in rare network interview

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden rarely gives network interviews, and when he sat down in the MSNBC studio on Thursday, it came at an especially busy time, with the Supreme Court having just overturned the use of affirmative action in college admissions and in the aftermath of a revolt in Russia.

The nearly 20-minute conversation addressed those matters. But it also veered heavily into topics like criticism of the media and light-hearted discussion of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who was a friend of Biden’s.

When Donald Trump was president, he was criticized for giving interviews to sympathetic media outlets where the questions were often soft and even fawning. Biden, meanwhile, has done far fewer formal interviews than his immediate predecessors. His last network interview was in early May and also on MSNBC.

This time, interviewer Nicolle Wallace, who was White House communications director under President George W. Bush and worked on McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, kicked things off by noting how unusual it was for a sitting president to appear in a network studio.

“The president of the United States is here. Really. At the table,” Wallace began, before telling Biden, “This is very exciting for us.” Biden responded, “It’s exciting for me.”

The president said the Supreme Court had “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history,” pointing to its decision Thursday on affirmative action and its overturning of the constitutional right to abortion last summer.

“I just find it so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people,” Biden said.

He said he did not support the idea of expanding the number of Supreme Court justices, as a number of progressives have urged him to do.

He also spoke about his reelection campaign, acknowledging, “I know the polling numbers are not good.” He noted that many polls once suggested he wouldn’t win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary or defeat Trump in that year’s general election, and they didn’t indicate that Democrats would have a stronger-than-expected showing in last year’s midterms.

The president then spoke at length about the media, saying, “This is not a criticism of the press. It’s an observation. There’s a lot to be worried about around the world, and talking to a lot of reporters, they tell me — I’m going to be careful what I say here — a number of reporters have indicated that there’s no editors anymore, on what they do.”

“Huh,” responded Wallace, as Biden continued that he’d been told by some reporters that they are under pressure to build their personal brands, finally concluding, “I just think there’s a lot changing.”

Wallace asked about the Russian revolt and what the U.S. knew. Biden responded, “We knew things ahead of time,” but said he couldn’t say what. Wallace followed up, “Did you worry that Trump might have tipped him off, had he still been president?” She was apparently asking whether Trump would have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of the mercenary leader’s plans for the rebellion against Russia’s military leaders.

“Oh, God,” Biden said. “I don’t know. I don’t think about that very often.”

The president spoke a bit more about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Wallace eventually referenced McCain and asked, “What do you think he would think of his Republican Party?”

“I don’t think he’d think much of it,” Biden said, but quickly added, “I don’t know that.”

Wallace concluded by again noting the rarity of Biden’s in-studio appearance, adding, “Consider it your chair. Consider it an open invitation. There are going to be a lot of things on people’s minds, and I hope you’ll look at this as a place where you can come and talk about anything that’s on your mind.”

“Well, I will,” Biden said.

MSNBC declined to comment on the interview afterward.

Later Thursday, Biden attended New York fundraisers to collect donations for his reelection campaign. But the visit to New York, where MSNBC’s studio is located, was an official one — meaning taxpayers funded at least parts of it.

“It’s a mixed — mixed travel trip with official and political — political portions,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to New York.

Asked what the official part of the trip was, Jean-Pierre responded, “You all are always criticizing the president for not doing enough interviews — right?”

“He’s going to New York, and we took the opportunity to go in studio,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’s his first in-studio interview.”

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June 29, 2023
Pope’s peace envoy arrives in Moscow after the short-lived Wagner rebellion

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ROME — Pope Francis’ peace envoy arrived in Moscow on Tuesday in hopes of helping find “a solution to the tragic current situation” of the war in Ukraine, weeks after making a preliminary visit to Kyiv, the Vatican said.

The mission by Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, a veteran of the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives, comes as the Kremlin is reeling from the weekend armed rebellion led by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. Russia has since dropped charges against Prigozhin and others who took part in the brief mutiny.

Details of Zuppi’s itinerary weren’t immediately clear. When he visited Kyiv earlier this month, he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In Moscow, one likely visit would be paid to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leader Patriarch Kirill has strongly supported the war.

The Vatican has said Zuppi is hoping to find “paths of peace” in his shuttle missions.

On the Moscow leg, Zuppi was accompanied by an official from the Vatican secretariat of state. His car was seen arriving at the Moscow embassy Tuesday evening, according to footage aired on Italian state-run RAI television, which said he was expected to have meetings with religious and possibly political figures in the coming days.

He is due to remain in Moscow until Thursday, which is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul — an important day for both Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

“The principle aim of the initiative is to encourage gestures of humanity that can contribute to favor a solution to the tragic current situation and find paths to a just peace,” the Vatican statement said.

Zuppi, 67, is the archbishop of Bologna, president of the Italian bishops conference and a veteran of the Catholic Church’s peace mediation initiatives through his longtime affiliation with the Sant’Egidio Community. Through the Rome-based charity, Zuppi helped mediate the 1990s peace deals ending civil wars in Guatemala and Mozambique, and headed the commission negotiating a cease-fire in Burundi in 2000, according to Sant’Egidio.

A pastor in Francis’ style and considered “papabile” — having the qualities of a future pope — Zuppi was tapped by Francis in May.

The Argentine Jesuit pope has repeatedly expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people and called for peace, but he has refrained from calling out Russia or President Vladimir Putin by name.

The Vatican has a tradition of quiet diplomacy and not taking sides in conflicts, in hopes of helping forge peaceful outcomes.

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June 27, 2023
Biden calls mutiny a ‘struggle within the Russian system’ and says US and NATO played no part

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden declared Monday that the United States and NATO played no part in the Wagner mercenary group’s short-lived insurrection in Russia, calling the uprising and the longer-term challenges it poses for President Vladimir Putin’s power “a struggle within the Russian system.”

Biden and U.S. allies supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion emphasized their intent to be seen as staying out of the mercenaries’ stunning insurgency, the biggest threat to Putin in his two decades leading Russia. They are concerned that Putin could use accusations of Western involvement to rally Russians to his defense.

Biden and administration officials declined an immediate assessment of what the 22-hour uprising by the Wagner Group might mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine, for mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin or for Russia itself.

“We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications from Russia and Ukraine,” Biden said. “But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”

Putin, in his first public comments since the rebellion, blamed “Russia’s enemies” and said they “miscalculated.” He did not specify whom he meant.

Over the course of a tumultuous weekend in Russia, U.S. diplomats were in contact with their counterparts in Moscow to underscore that the American government regarded the matter as a domestic affair for Russia, with the U.S. only a bystander, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

American diplomats also stressed to Moscow that they expected Russia to ensure the safety of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and Americans detained in Russia, Miller said.

In a video call between Biden and leaders of U.S.-allied countries over the weekend, all were determined to give Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West,” Biden told reporters at the White House.

“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that Putin in the past has alleged clandestine U.S. involvement in events — including democratic uprisings in former Soviet countries, and campaigns by democracy activists inside and outside Russia — as a way to diminish public support among Russians for those challenges to the Russian system.

The U.S. and NATO “don’t want to be blamed for the appearance of trying to destabilize Putin,” McFaul said.

A feud between the Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and Russia’s military brass that has festered throughout the war erupted into a mutiny that saw the mercenaries leave Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city. They rolled for hundreds of kilometers toward Moscow, before turning around on Saturday, in a reported deal whose terms remain uncertain.

Biden’s national security team briefed him hourly as Prigozhin’s forces were on move, the president said. He had directed them to “prepare for a range of scenarios” as Russia’s crisis unfolded, he said.

Biden did not elaborate on the scenarios. But national security spokesman John Kirby addressed one concern raised frequently by the public, news media and others as the world watched the cracks opening in Putin’s hold on power — worries that the Russian leader might take extreme action to reassert his command.

Putin and the Kremlin have made repeated references to Russia’s nuclear weapons since invading Ukraine 16 months ago, aiming to discourage NATO countries from ratcheting up their support to Ukraine.

“One thing that we have always talked about, unabashedly so, is that it’s in nobody’s interest for this war to escalate beyond the level of violence that is already visited upon the Ukrainian people,” Kirby said at a White House news briefing. “It’s not good for, certainly, Ukraine and not good for our allies and partners in Europe. Quite frankly, it’s not good for the Russian people.”

In the aftermath of the mutiny, both Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made public comments Monday aiming to play down the crisis.

In an 11-minute audio statement, Prigozhin said he acted “to prevent the destruction of the Wagner private military company” and in particular in response to an attack on a Wagner camp that killed some 30 of his fighters.

Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend, telling him, ”’No matter what happened in Russia, let me say again, no matter what happened in Russia, we in the United States would continue to support Ukraine’s defense and sovereignty and its territorial integrity.” Biden said. He said he intended to speak with Zelenskyy again late Monday or early Tuesday.

Biden, in the first weeks after Putin sent tens of thousands of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022, had issued a passionate statement against the Russian leader’s continuing in command. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said then, as reports emerged of Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukraine.

On Monday, U.S. officials were careful not to be seen as backing either Putin or his former longtime protege, Prigozhin, in public comments.

“We believe it’s up to the Russian people to determine who their leadership is,” Kirby said.

White House officials were also trying to understand how Beijing was digesting the Wagner revolt and what it might mean for the China-Russia relationship going forward. China and Russia are each other’s closest major partner. The White House says Beijing has considered — but not followed through — on sending Russia weaponry for use in Ukraine.

“I think it’d be fair to say that recent developments in Russia had been unsettling to the Chinese leadership,” said Kurt Campbell, coordinator for the Indo-Pacific at the White House National Security Council, speaking at a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “I think I’ll just leave it at that.”

China values Russia as a friend in part to keep from standing alone against the U.S. and its allies in disputes. With Russia’s invasion and resulting international sanctions sapping Russian resources and now sparking a rebellion, McFaul said, Ukraine and its allies could make the case: “‘Xi Jinping, you know, if you want your buddy to stay in power, maybe this is the time to put some pressure on him to wrap up this war.”’

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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June 26, 2023
Putin thanks nation for unity after aborted rebellion

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Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked the nation on Monday for unity after an armed rebellion over the weekend was aborted less than 24 hours after it began. Earlier in the day, the mercenary chief defended his short-lived insurrection in a boastful statement.

In his first appearance since the rebellion ended, Putin also thanked most of the mercenaries for not letting the situation deteriorate into “bloodshed.” He said all necessary measures have been taken to protect the country and the people from the rebellion.

He blamed “Russia’s enemies” and said they “miscalculated.”

The Kremlin also tried to project stability on Monday when authorities released a video of Russia’s defense minister reviewing troops in Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary group, said he wasn’t seeking to stage a coup but was acting to prevent the destruction of Wagner, his private military company. “We started our march because of an injustice,” he said in an 11-minute statement, giving no details about where he was or what his plans were.

The feud between the Wagner Group leader and Russia’s military brass has festered throughout the war, erupting into a mutiny over the weekend when mercenaries left Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city. They rolled seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday.

The Kremlin said it had made a deal for Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers. There was no confirmation of his whereabouts Monday, although a popular Russian news channel on Telegram reported he was at a hotel in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

Prigozhin taunted Russia’s military on Monday, calling his march a “master class” on how it should have carried out the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He also mocked the military for failing to protect Russia, pointing out security breaches that allowed Wagner to march 780 kilometers (500 miles) toward Moscow without facing resistance.

The bullish statement made no clearer what would ultimately happen to Prigozhin and his forces under the deal purportedly brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Prigozhin said only that Lukashenko “proposed finding solutions for the Wagner private military company to continue its work in a lawful jurisdiction.” That suggested Prigozhin might keep his military force, although it wasn’t immediately clear which jurisdiction he was referring to.

The independent Russian news outlet Vyorstka claimed that construction of a field camp for up to 8,000 Wagner troops was underway in an area of Belarus about 200 kilometers (320 miles) north of the border with Ukraine.

The report couldn’t be independently verified. The Belarusian military monitoring group Belaruski Hajun said Monday on Telegram that it had seen no activity in that district consistent with construction of a facility, and had no indications of Wagner convoys in or moving towards Belarus.

Though the mutiny was brief, it was not bloodless. Russian media reported that several military helicopters and a communications plane were shot down by Wagner forces, killing at least 15. Prigozhin expressed regret for attacking the aircraft but said they were bombing his convoys.

Russian media reported that a criminal case against Prigozhin hasn’t been closed, despite earlier Kremlin statements, and some Russian lawmakers called for his head.

Andrei Gurulev, a retired general and current lawmaker who has had rows with the mercenary leader, said Prigozhin and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin deserve “a bullet in the head.”

And Nikita Yurefev, a city council member in St. Petersburg, said he filed an official request with Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, asking who would be punished for the rebellion, given that Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed in a Saturday morning address to punish those behind it.

It was unclear what resources Prigozhin can draw on, and how much of his substantial wealth he can access. Police searching his St. Petersburg office amid the rebellion found 4 billion rubles ($48 million) in trucks outside the building, according to Russian media reports confirmed by the Wagner boss. He said the money was intended to pay his soldiers’ families.

Russian media reported that Wagner offices in several Russian cities had reopened on Monday and the company had resumed enlisting recruits.

In a return to at least superficial normality, Moscow’s mayor announced an end to the “counterterrorism regime” imposed on the capital Saturday, when troops and armored vehicles set up checkpoints on the outskirts and authorities tore up roads leading into the city.

The Defense Ministry published video of defense chief Sergei Shoigu in a helicopter and then meeting with officers at a military headquarters in Ukraine. It was unclear when the video was shot. It came as Russian media speculated that Shoigu and other military leaders have lost Putin’s confidence and could be replaced.

Before the uprising, Prigozhin had blasted Shoigu and General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov with expletive-ridden insults for months, accusing them of failing to provide his troops with enough ammunition during the fight for the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

Prigozhin’s statement appeared to confirm analysts’ view that the revolt was a desperate move to save Wagner from being dismantled after an order that all private military companies sign contracts with the Defense Ministry by July 1.

Prigozhin said most of his fighters refused to come under the Defense Ministry’s command, and the force planned to hand over the military equipment it was using in Ukraine on June 30 after pulling out of Ukraine and gathering in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. He accused the Defense Ministry of attacking Wagner’s camp, prompting them to move sooner.

Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said on Twitter that Prigozhin’s mutiny “wasn’t a bid for power or an attempt to overtake the Kremlin,” but a desperate move amid his escalating rift with the military leadership.

While Prigozhin could get out of the crisis alive, he doesn’t have a political future in Russia under Putin, Stanovaya said.

It was unclear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine, where Western officials say Russia’s troops suffer low morale. Wagner’s forces were key to Russia’s only land victory in months, in Bakhmut.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said Monday that Ukraine had “gained impetus” in its push around Bakhmut, making progress north and south of the town. Ukrainian forces claimed to have retaken Rivnopil, a village in southeast Ukraine that has seen heavy fighting.

U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders of several of Ukraine’s European allies discussed the events in Russia over the weekend, but Western officials have been muted in their public comments.

Biden said Monday that the U.S. and NATO were not involved in the short-lived insurrection. Speaking at the White House, Biden explained that he was cautious about speaking publicly because he wanted to give “Putin no excuse to blame this on the West and blame this on NATO.”

“We made clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Biden said the U.S. was coordinating with allies to monitor the situation and maintain support for Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg concurred Monday that “the events over the weekend are an internal Russian matter.”

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Lynne Tracy had contacted Russian representatives Saturday to stress that the U.S. was not involved in the mutiny.

The events show the war is “cracking Russia’s political system,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

“The monster that Putin created with Wagner, the monster is biting him now,” Borrell said. “The monster is acting against his creator.”

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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jill Lawless in London contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-war

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June 26, 2023
With Russia revolt over, mercenaries’ future and direction of Ukraine war remain uncertain

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Russian government troops withdrew from the streets of Moscow on Sunday and the rebellious mercenary soldiers who had occupied other cities were gone, but the short-lived revolt has weakened President Vladimir Putin just as his forces are facing a fierce counteroffensive in Ukraine.

Under terms of the agreement that ended the crisis, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his Wagner troops in an aborted march on the capital Saturday, will go into exile in Belarus but will not face prosecution.

But it was unclear what would ultimately happen to him and his troops. Few details of the deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko have been released, and neither Prigozhin nor Putin has been heard from. Top Russian military leaders have also remained silent.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the weekend’s events as “extraordinary,” recalling that 16 months ago Putin appeared poised to seize the capital of Ukraine and now he has had to defend Moscow from forces led by his onetime protege.

“I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade,” Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there, but certainly we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.”

It was not yet clear what the fissures opened by the 24-hour rebellion would mean for the war in Ukraine. But it resulted in some of the best forces fighting for Russia being pulled from the battlefield: the Wagner troops, who had shown their effectiveness in scoring the Kremlin’s only land victory in months, in Bakhmut, and Chechen soldiers sent to stop them on the approach to Moscow.

The Wagner forces’ largely unopposed, rapid advance also exposed vulnerabilities in Russia’s security and military forces. The mercenary soldiers were reported to have downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. The Defense Ministry has not commented.

“I honestly think that Wagner probably did more damage to Russian aerospace forces in the past day than the Ukrainian offensive has done in the past three weeks,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia Studies at the CAN research group, said in a podcast.

Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting could create opportunities for their army, which is in the early stages of a counteroffensive to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

“Putin is much diminished and the Russian military, and this is significant as far as Ukraine is concerned,” said Lord Richard Dannatt, former chief of the general staff of the British armed forces. “… Prigozhin has left the stage to go to Belarus, but is that the end of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group?”

Under terms of the agreement that stopped Prigozhin’s advance, Wagner troops who didn’t back the revolt will be offered contracts directly with the Russian military, putting them under the control of the military brass that Prigozhin was trying to oust. A possible motivation for Prigozhin’s rebellion was the Defense Ministry’s demand, which Putin backed, that private companies sign contracts with it by July 1. Prigozhin had refused to do it.

“What we don’t know, but will discover in the next hours and days is, how many of his fighters have gone with him, because if he has gone to Belarus and kept an effective fighting force around him, then he … presents a threat again” to Ukraine, Dannatt said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he told U.S. President Joe Biden in a phone call on Sunday that the aborted rebellion in Russia had “exposed the weakness of Putin’s regime.”

In their lightning advance, Prigozhin’s forces on Saturday took control of two military hubs in southern Russia and got within 200 kilometers (120 miles) of Moscow before retreating.

People in Rostov-on-Don cheered Wagner troops as they departed late Saturday, a scene that played into Putin’s fear of a popular uprising. Some ran to shake hands with Prigozhin as he drove away in an SUV.

Yet the rebellion fizzled quickly, in part because Prigozhin did not have the backing he apparently expected from Russian security services. The Federal Security Services immediately called for his arrest.

“Clearly, Prigozhin lost his nerve,” retired U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“This rebellion, although it had some applause along the way, didn’t appear to be generating the kind of support that he had hoped it would.”

Rostov appeared calm Sunday morning, with only tank tracks on the roads as a reminder of the Wagner fighters.

“It all ended perfectly well, thank God. With minimal casualties, I think. Good job,” said one of the residents, who agreed only to provide his first name, Sergei. He said the Wagner soldiers used to be heroes to him, but not now.

In the Lipetsk region, which sits on the road to Moscow, residents appeared unfazed by the turmoil.

“They did not disrupt anything. They stood calmly on the pavement and did not approach or talk to anyone,” Milena Gorbunova told the AP.

As Wagner forces moved north toward Moscow, Russian troops armed with machine guns set up checkpoints on the outskirts. By Sunday afternoon, the troops had withdrawn and traffic had returned to normal, although Red Square remained closed to visitors. On highways leading to Moscow, crews repaired roads ripped up just hours earlier in panic.

Anchors on state-controlled television stations cast the deal ending the crisis as a show of Putin’s wisdom and aired footage of Wagner troops retreating from Rostov to the relief of local residents who feared a bloody battle for control of the city. People there who were interviewed by Channel 1 praised Putin’s handling of the crisis.

But the revolt and the deal that ended it severely dented Putin’s reputation as a leader willing to ruthlessly punish anyone who challenges his authority.

Prigozhin had demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigozhin has long criticized in withering terms for how he has conducted the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. had intelligence that Prigozhin had been building up his forces near the border with Russia for some time. That conflicts with Prigozhin’s claim that his rebellion was a response to an attack on his field camps in Ukraine on Friday by the Russian military that he said killed a large number of his men. The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the march on Moscow appeared to have been planned in advance.

“Now, being a military guy, he understands the logistics and really the assistance that he’s going to need to do that,” including from some Russians on the border with Ukraine who supported him, Turner said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“This is something that would have had to have been planned for a significant amount of time to be executed in the manner in which it was,” he said.

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This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Zelenskyy’s first name and to fix AP style on Belarusian.

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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, contributed to this report.

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June 25, 2023
Russia says China backs its efforts to stabilize the country after mercenary rebellion

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TAIPEI, Taiwan — Russia said on Sunday that China threw its support behind President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to stabilize the country after an aborted rebellion against the Kremlin by an army of mercenaries.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said China declared support for the leadership in Moscow during a previously unannounced trip to Beijing by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko.

“The Chinese side expressed support for the efforts of the leadership of the Russian Federation to stabilize the situation in the country in connection with the events of June 24, and reaffirmed its interest in strengthening the unity and further prosperity of Russia,” the Russian statement said.

Rudenko met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang to discuss “international and regional issues of common concern,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website.

Rudenko’s visit came just a day after Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of private mercenary army Wagner Group, ordered his troops to march on Moscow in the greatest challenge to Putin’s more than two decades in power. Prigozhin later on Saturday reached a deal with the Kremlin to go into exile.

It was unclear whether Rudenko’s visit to China was in response to the rebellion.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Sunday that the uprising was “Russia’s internal affair.”

“As a friendly neighbor and comprehensive strategic partner in the new era, China supports Russia in maintaining national stability and achieving development and prosperity,” it said, without explicitly referencing Russia’s leadership.

China and Russia, while not formal allies, have maintained close ties throughout Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which China has refused to condemn.

The United States and other Western powers have urged Beijing not to supply Russia with arms that could be used in the Ukraine conflict. China in May sent an envoy to Ukraine and Russia in an attempt to mediate talks to end the war.

While in Beijing, Rudenko also held talks with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu. The two sides pledged to “strengthen solidarity and cooperation” and promote the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security-focused regional group that both Russia and China belong to, according to a readout of the talks by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“Under the complex and severe international situation, it is necessary to … communicate in a timely manner, ensure the stable and long-term relationship between the two countries and safeguard the common interests of both sides,” Ma said.

Although short-lived, analysts say the Wagner Group revolt exposed further weaknesses of Putin, whose image has already been badly bruised by the Ukraine war, which has dragged on for 16 months and claimed huge numbers of Russian troops.

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June 25, 2023
The mercenary chief who urged an uprising against Russia’s generals has long ties to Putin

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The millionaire mercenary chief who long benefitted from the powerful patronage of President Vladimir Putin has moved into the global spotlight with a dramatic rebellion against Russia’s military that challenged the authority of Putin himself.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is the 62-year-old owner of the Kremlin-allied Wagner Group, a private army of inmate recruits and other mercenaries that has fought some of the deadliest battles in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Friday, Prigozhin abruptly escalated months of scathing criticism of Russia’s conduct of the war, calling for an armed uprising to oust the defense minister, and then rolling toward Moscow with his soldiers-for-hire.

As Putin’s government declared a “counterterrorism” alert and scrambled to seal off Moscow with checkpoints, Prigozhin just as abruptly stood down the following day. As part of the deal to defuse the crisis, he agreed to move to Belarus and was seen late Saturday retreating with his forces from Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia where they had taken over the military headquarters.

It was unclear what was next for Prigozhin, a former prison inmate, hot-dog vendor and restaurant owner who has riveted world attention.

‘PUTIN’S CHEF’

Prigozhin and Putin go way back, with both born in Leningrad, what is now St. Petersburg.

During the final years of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin served time in prison — 10 years by his own admission — although he does not say what it was for.

Afterward, he owned a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants that drew interest from Putin. In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French President Jacques Chirac to dine at one of them.

“Vladimir Putin saw how I built a business out of a kiosk, he saw that I don’t mind serving to the esteemed guests because they were my guests,” Prigozhin recalled in an interview published in 2011.

His businesses expanded significantly to catering and providing school lunches. In 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory, which was built on generous loans by a state bank. In Moscow alone, his company Concord won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals at public schools. He also organized catering for Kremlin events for several years — earning him the nickname “Putin’s chef” — and has provided catering and utility services to the Russian military.

In 2017, opposition figure and corruption fighter Alexei Navalny accused Prigozhin’s companies of breaking antitrust laws by bidding for some $387 million in Defense Ministry contracts.

MILITARY CONNECTION

Prigozhin also owns the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-allied mercenary force that has come to play a central role in Putin’s projection of Russian influence in trouble spots around the world.

The United States, European Union, United Nations and others say the mercenary force has involved itself in conflicts in countries across Africa in particular. Wagner fighters allegedly provide security for national leaders or warlords in exchange for lucrative payments, often including a share of gold or other natural resources. U.S. officials say Russia may also be using Wagner’s work in Africa to support its war in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Prigozhin’s mercenaries have become a major force in the war, fighting as counterparts to the Russian army in battles with Ukrainian forces.

That includes Wagner fighters taking Bakhmut, the city where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. By last month, Wagner Group and Russian forces appeared to have largely won Bakhmut, a victory with strategically slight importance for Russia despite the cost in lives. Prigozhin has said that 20,000 of his men died in Bakhmut, about half of them inmates recruited from Russia’s prisons.

WHAT IS THE GROUP’S REPUTATION?

Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner Group mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.

In December 2021, the European Union accused the group of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Some of the reported incidents stood out in their grisly brutality.

In November 2022, a video surfaced online that showed a former Wagner contractor getting beaten to death with a sledgehammer after he allegedly fled to the Ukrainian side and was recaptured. Despite public outrage and a stream of demands for an investigation, the Kremlin turned a blind eye to it.

RAGING AGAINST RUSSIA’S GENERALS

As his forces fought and died en masse in Ukraine, Prigozhin raged against Russia’s military brass. In a video released by his team last month, Prigozhin stood next to rows bodies he said were those of Wagner fighters. He accused Russia’s regular military of incompetence and of starving his troops of the weapons and ammunition they needed to fight.

“These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said then. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”

CRITICIZING THE BRASS

Prigozhin has castigated the top military brass, accusing top-ranking officers of incompetence. His remarks were unprecedented for Russia’s tightly controlled political system, in which only Putin could air such criticism.

In January, Putin reaffirmed his trust in the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, by putting him in direct charge of the Russian forces in Ukraine, a move that some observers also interpreted as an attempt to cut Prigozhin down to size.

Asked recently about a media comparison of him to Grigory Rasputin, a mystic who gained influence over Russia’s last czar by claiming to have the power to cure his son’s hemophilia, Prigozhin snapped: “I don’t stop blood, but I spill blood of the enemies of our Motherland.”

A ‘BAD ACTOR’ IN THE US

Prigozhin earlier gained more limited attention in the U.S., when he and a dozen other Russian nationals and three Russian companies were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.

They were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Prigozhin and associates repeatedly in connection with both his election interference and his leadership of the Wagner Group.

After the 2018 indictment, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Prigozhin as saying, in a clearly sarcastic remark: “Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I treat them with great respect. I’m not at all upset that I’m on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

The Biden White House in that episode called him “a known bad actor,” and State Department spokesman Ned Price said Prigozhin’s “bold confession, if anything, appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin.”

AVOIDING CHALLENGES TO PUTIN

As Prigozhin grew more outspoken against the way Russia’s conventional military conducted fighting in Ukraine, he continued to play a seemingly indispensable role for the Russian offensive, and appeared to suffer no retaliation from Putin for his criticism of Putin’s generals.

Media reports at times suggested Prigozhin’s influence on Putin was growing and he was after a prominent political post. But analysts warned against overestimating his influence with Putin.

“He’s not one of Putin’s close figures or a confidant,” said Mark Galeotti of University College, London, who specializes in Russian security affairs, speaking on his podcast “In Moscow’s Shadows.”

“Prigozhin does what the Kremlin wants and does very well for himself in the process. But that’s the thing — he is part of the staff rather than part of the family,” Galeotti said.

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June 24, 2023
Russia says Wagner Group’s leader will move to Belarus after his rebellious march challenged Putin

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The rebellious Russian mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow before abruptly reversing course will move to neighboring Belarus and not face prosecution, the Kremlin said Saturday, as part of a deal to defuse a crisis that represented the most significant challenge to President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power.

The charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin for mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped and the troops who joined him also will not be prosecuted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced, and fighters from his Wagner Group who did not take part in the uprising will be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry.

Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege, whose forces seized a key military facility in southern Russia before advancing on the capital. In a televised speech to the nation, Putin called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

In allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Peskov said Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”

Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. Red Square was shut down, and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.

But after the deal was struck, Prigozhin announced that while his men were just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow, he had decided to retreat to avoid “shedding Russian blood.” His troops were ordered back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers.

Prigozhin has demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, long the target of his withering criticism for his conduct of the war in Ukraine. On Friday, he accused forces under Shoigu’s command of attacking Wagner camps and killing “a huge number of our comrades.”

Prigozhin did not say whether the Kremlin had responded to his demand. Peskov said the issue could not have been discussed during the negotiations, which were conducted by the president of Belarus, and is the “exclusive prerogative of the commander in chief.”

If Putin were to agree to Shoigu’s ouster, it could be politically damaging for the president after he branded Prigozhin a backstabbing traitor.

Early Saturday, Prigozhin’s private army appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow, which runs Russian operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.

A nighttime video from the city posted on Russian messaging app channels showed people cheering Wagner troops as they left Rostov-on-Don. Prigozhin was seen riding in one of the vehicles, and people greeted him and some ran to shake his hand as he lowered the window. The regional governor later said that all of the troops had left the city.

Wagner troops and equipment also were in Lipetsk province, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) south of Moscow.

Authorities declared a “counterterrorist regime” in Moscow and its surrounding region, enhancing security and restricting some movement. On the southern outskirts, troops erected checkpoints, arranged sandbags and set up machine guns. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin declared Monday a non-working day for most residents as part of the heightened security, a measure that remained in effect even after the retreat.

The dramatic developments came exactly 16 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s largest conflict since World War II, which has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and reduced cities to rubble.

Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting would create opportunities for their army to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that even with a deal, Putin’s position has probably been weakened and “these events will have been of great comfort to the Ukrainian government and the military.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Saturday, shortly before Prigozhin announced his retreat, that the march exposed weakness in the Kremlin and “showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs” that it is easy to capture Russian cities “and, probably, arsenals.”

Switching into Russian in his daily video address, Zelenskyy said “the man from the Kremlin” was “very afraid.” He repeated his calls for the West to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets and ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.

Prigozhin had vowed earlier that his fighters, whom he said number some 25,000, would not surrender because “we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.”

“Regarding the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our homeland,” he said in an audio message on his Telegram channel.

He posted video of himself at the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and claimed his forces had taken control of the airfield and other military facilities in the city without any deaths or even “a single gunshot.”

Russian media, however, reported that several helicopters and a military communications plane were downed by Wagner troops. The Kremlin referred a question about the losses to the Defense Ministry, which has not commented.

The short-lived rebellion came as Russia is “fighting the toughest battle for its future,” Putin said, with the West piling sanctions on Moscow and arming Ukraine.

“The entire military, economic and information machine of the West is waged against us,” Putin said.

State-controlled TV networks led their newscasts with Putin’s statement and reported the tense situation in Rostov-on-Don. Broadcasters also carried statements from top Russian officials and lawmakers voicing support for Putin, condemning Prigozhin and urging him to back down.

Chechnyan strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who in the past has sided with Prigozhin in his criticisms of Russia’s military, also expressed support for Putin’s “every word.”

“The mutiny needs to be suppressed,” Kadyrov said.

Wagner troops have played a crucial role in the Ukraine war, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. But Prigozhin has increasingly criticized the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.

In announcing the rebellion, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of attacking the Wagner camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery. He alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu in which they decided to destroy the military contractor.

The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

The 62-year-old Prigozhin, a former convict, has longstanding ties to Putin and won lucrative Kremlin catering contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.”

He gained attention in the U.S. when he and a dozen other Russian nationals were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory. Wagner has sent military contractors to Libya, Syria, several African countries and eventually Ukraine.

The rebellion appeared likely to further hinder Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, as Kyiv’s forces probed Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.

Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House think tank in London, said the infighting could create confusion and potential division among Russian military forces.

“Russian troops in Ukraine may well now be operating in a vacuum, without clear military instructions, and doubts about whom to obey and follow,″ Lutsevych said. “This creates a unique and unprecedented military opportunity for the Ukrainian army.”

Western countries monitored developments closely. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterparts in the other G7 countries and the European Union’s foreign affairs representative, his spokesman said, adding that Blinken “reiterated that support by the United States for Ukraine will not change.”

Latvia and Estonia, two NATO countries that border Russia, said they were increasing security at their borders.

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Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed.

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June 24, 2023
Live Updates | Armed rebellion by Russian mercenary chief

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The latest on the armed rebellion declared by Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin:

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The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned the West against trying to take advantage of the rebellion led by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The ministry said in a statement Saturday that “we are cautioning Western countries against even a hint of using the internal situation in Russia for achieving their Russophobic goals.”

It argued that the mutiny plays into the hands of Russia’s enemies and said that the Russian public stands behind President Vladimir Putin.

The ministry said that Moscow appreciates its allies and partners voicing their understanding of the situation.

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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

Putin calls armed rebellion by mercenary chief a betrayal and vows to punish its leaders

Prigozhin, the mercenary chief urging an uprising, has long ties to Putin

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Security in a number of Russian regions was tightened as authorities sought to thwart an armed rebellion spearheaded by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

There was tighter security particularly in areas between the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, where Prigozhin’s Wagner group appeared to control military headquarters, and Moscow.

The governor of the Lipetsk region asked residents to stay at home and refrain from traveling. Governor Igor Artamonov said on Telegram that Wagner had entered the province but “the situation is under control.”

In the neighboring Tambov region, mass events were canceled Saturday.

Those events included high school graduation parties. Russia’s Education Ministry said such parties were being postponed until July 1 in Moscow, the region around the capital and “a number of other regions where additional anti-terrorist measures have been introduced.”

The governor of the Kaluga region, just south of the Moscow region, said that movement on roads in areas on its western, southern and eastern borders had been restricted. Vladislav Shapsha wrote on Telegram that people should “refrain from traveling by private vehicle on these roads unless absolutely necessary.”

In the capital, traffic on the Moscow River was suspended. Police officers in bulletproof vests and with machine guns were seen near the entrance of the major highway that links Moscow with Voronezh and Rostov–on-Don.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office says he told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday that Turkey was ready to help resolve the stand-off in Russia with the mercenary Wagner group.

The Turkish presidency tweeted that, in a phone call with Putin, Erdogan “underlined the importance of acting with common sense” and said Ankara could help resolve events as soon as possible. It did not specify how Turkey could help.

Turkey has retained close ties with both Moscow and Kyiv during the war

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The governor of Russia’s Lipetsk province said Saturday that the Wagner mercenary group has entered the region.

The Lipetsk region is about 360 kilometers (225 miles) south of Moscow and much closer to the capital than Rostov-on-Don, where Wagner forces appeared during the night.

Authorities “are taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety of the population. The situation is under control,” governor Igor Artamonov said on Telegram. He did not give details about the Wagner presence.

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Ukraine’s deputy defense minister says the “political crisis” in Russia provides Kyiv with a “window of opportunity.”

Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram Saturday that Moscow’s “erroneous decision” to start a war in Ukraine had brought about “the inevitable degradation of the Russian state.”

The rebellion by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin comes as Kyiv’s forces have been probing Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.

Speaking in Kyiv, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “a coup is taking place in Russia, led by Prigozhin and his Wagner troops. Any coup, any problem that emerges in enemy’s rear aligns with our interest.”

He added that “it is early to estimate consequences.”

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Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven major industrial powers conferred Saturday on the situation in Russia after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion.

The U.S. State Department and German Foreign Ministry gave few details of the discussion, which also included the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

The State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken “reiterated that support by the United States for Ukraine will not change.” It said that the U.S. “will stay in close coordination” with allies and partners as the situation develops.

The G7 comprises the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and the U.K.

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The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to several foreign leaders on Saturday following the armed rebellion by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin spoke on the phone with the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and “informed his counterparts of the situation.”

Putin also spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A Kremlin statement said the Russian leader informed Erdogan “about the situation in the country related to an attempted armed rebellion,” and the Turkish president “expressed full support for the steps of the Russian leadership.”

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Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin claims that his troops entered the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don without a single shot and says that no one was killed during what he calls a “march of justice.”

Prigozhin said in a new audio statement on Saturday that “we didn’t touch a single conscript, we didn’t kill a single person on our way.” He added that the Russian air force targeted his troops, but they still managed to seize military headquarters in Rostov “without a single gunshot.”

His claims could not be independently verified. The Russian authorities haven’t reported any casualties so far, either.

Shortly before Prigozhin released his statement, an explosion was heard near the military headquarters his Wagner group apparently controls in Rostov. It was not immediately clear where the explosion occurred, how big it was and whether it caused any damage.

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Estonia and Latvian officials say their countries have stepped up border security following an armed rebellion in neighboring Russia by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Both nations are NATO members and strong backers of Ukraine, and have tense relations with Russia. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas wrote on Twitter that Estonia is “closely following” developments and exchanging information with allies.

She wrote: “I can assure that there is no direct threat to our country. Border security has been strengthened.”

Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics of neighboring Latvia wrote in an English-language Twitter post that his country’s border security also has been strengthened and “visa or border entry from Russians leaving Russia due to current events won’t be considered.”

He said there is “no direct threat to Latvia at this time.”

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekenskyy says it is clear that Russia is suffering from “full-scale weakness” after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion.

Zelenskyy said in comments posted on his Telegram channel Saturday that “anyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself.”

He said that “for a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it.”

“Russia’s weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness,” Zelenskyy said. “And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later. This is also obvious.”

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Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni says she is monitoring events in Russia and they underline “how the aggression against Ukraine is provoking instability within the Russian Federation.”

Meloni said in comments to reporters in Austria later Saturday that the situation in Russia is hard to evaluate.

She said that “it is a very chaotic situation inside the Russian Federation, that is out of tune with certain propaganda we have seen in recent months.”

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Russian mercenary leader Yevgheny Prigozhin on Saturday denied allegations by President Vladimir Putin that he is betraying his country and called his fighters patriots.

In an audio message on his Telegram channel, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said: “Regarding the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our homeland.”

He said his fighters would not turn themselves in at the request of Putin, as “we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.”

Putin said in televised address to the nation earlier Saturday that “all those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment.” He said that “the armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”

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Officials across Russia have rallied behind President Vladimir Putin, publicly reiterating their allegiance to the Kremlin and urging mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to back down.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, said that lawmakers “stand for the consolidation of forces” and support Putin after his address to the nation on Saturday.

He added that fighters from Prigozhin’s Wagner group “must make the only right choice: to be with their people, on the side of the law, to protect the security and future of the Motherland, to follow the orders of the Commander-in-Chief.”

Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said in a Telegram post that “we have one commander in chief. Not two, not three. One. And he urged everyone to unite.”

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechnya who in the past has sided with Prigozhin in his criticism of the military leadership, also expressed his full support for “every word of” Putin. He said that “the mutiny needs to be suppressed.”

So far, no Russian official has spoken out in support of Prigozhin.

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Unexpected support for mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s endeavor came from exiled tycoon turned opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Khodorkovsky said in a Facebook post that Prigozhin’s rebellion is “the strongest blow to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s reputation,” and that helping him get to Moscow would be “helping our country.”

He said Prigozhin had “repeated word for word what we, the anti-war opposition, have been saying since the beginning of the war” — that the “purpose of the war is theft” and no one believes in the official reason for the war in Ukraine.

Khodorkovsky wrote: “Help the devil, if he decides to oppose this regime! Help because there is no crime worse than unleashing an aggressive war. If one criminal is ready to interfere with another … we need to help, and then, if necessary, we will tackle them.”

——

A Ukrainian presidential adviser says that the start of his country’s counteroffensive has “finally destabilized the Russian elites” and intensified internal splits.

Mykhailo Podolyak said Saturday that events are “developing according to the scenario that we have been talking about for the past year,” Ukraine’s Interfax news agency reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to defend the country from an armed rebellion declared by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, which Putin called a “stab in the back” to Russia.

The rebellion comes as Kyiv’s forces have been probing Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive.

Podolyak said that “the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive finally destabilized the Russian elites, intensifying the internal split that arose after the defeat in Ukraine.”

He added: “Today we are actually witnessing the beginning of a civil war.”

——

Britain’s defense ministry has described the Wagner mercenary group’s armed rebellion as the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.

The ministry’s intelligence update posted Saturday says that the feud between Yevgeny Prigozhin’s group and the Russian state has “escalated into outright military confrontation’’

“In Rostov-on-Don, Wagner has almost certainly occupied key security sites, including the HQ which runs Russia’s military operations in Ukraine,’’ the update said. “Further Wagner units are moving north through Voronezh Oblast, almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow.”

The update says there is very limited evidence of fighting between Wagner and Russian security forces.

“Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out,” it said.

——

A video that appeared on Telegram on Saturday showed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin meeting with Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and deputy chief of the General Staff Vladimir Alexeyev.

In the video, whose origin couldn’t not be independently verified, Prigozhin claimed that he and his troops were “saving Russia” and demanded that the Russian authorities give up Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

“We want to get the chief of the General Staff and Shoigu,” Prigozhin said. “Until they are here, we are here, we are blocking the city of Rostov and go toward Moscow.”

Yevkurov and Alexeyev in the video tried to persuade Prigozhin to withdraw his forces from Roston-on-Don, but to no avail.

Prigozhin, a billionaire with ties to the Kremlin, has a long-running feud with the Russian military leadership.

——

Ukraine’s head of military intelligence says the conflict between the Russian military leadership and mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is “a frontal clash of lies and truth.”

Kyrylo Budanov told Ukrainian television on Saturday that the conflict stands out because Prigozhin, whether “you like him or not, he mainly says (the) truth” while Russia’s Defense Ministry tells “mainly lies.”

He said that the conflict “is not fake.”

Budanov said that, while senior Defense Ministry officials talk of advances with young and brave soldiers, Prigozhin points to miscalculations, poor equipment, lack of training and other problems.

He said: “This is a frontal clash of lies and truth. Even though both completely work in the interest of the Russian Federation, we need to remember this.”

——

Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation Saturday and vowed to defend the country and its people from an armed rebellion declared by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Putin said the mutiny amounted to “a deadly threat to our statehood” and vowed “tough actions” in response. “All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment. The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders,” Putin said.

He called Prigozhin’s actions, without referring to the owner of the Wagner private military company by name, “a betrayal” and “a treason.” He urged “those who are being dragged into this crime not to make a fatal and tragic, unique mistake, to make the only right choice — to stop participating in criminal acts.”

Putin condemned the rebellion at a time when Russia was “fighting the toughest battle for its future” with its war in Ukraine. “The entire military, economic and information machine of the West is waged against us,” Putin said.

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June 24, 2023
Putin calls armed rebellion by mercenary chief a betrayal and vows to punish its leaders

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President Vladimir Putin vowed Saturday to punish the organizers of an armed rebellion in Russia after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led his troops out of Ukraine and into a key southern city.

Putin denounced the uprising as “a stab in the back.” It was the biggest threat to his leadership in over two decades in power.

The private army led by Prigozhin appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow that runs Russian offensive operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.

As the fast-moving events unfolded in Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow is suffering “full-scale weakness” and that Kyiv was protecting Europe from “the spread of Russian evil and chaos.”

In his address, Putin called the actions by Prigozhin, whom he did not mention by name, a “betrayal” and “treason.”

“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment,” Putin said. “The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”

Prigozhin said his fighters would not surrender, as “we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.”

“Regarding the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our homeland,” he said in an audio message on his Telegram channel.

Prigozhin’s private military contractor, known as Wagner, has been fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine. His goals weren’t immediately clear, but the rebellion marks an escalation in his struggle with Russian military leaders, whom he accused of botching the war in Ukraine and hobbling his forces in the field.

“This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin said.

Prigozhin confirmed Saturday he and his troops reached Rostov-on-Don after crossing the border from Ukraine.

He posted a video of himself at the military headquarters in Rostov and claimed that his forces had taken control of the airfield and other military facilities in the city. Other videos on social media showed military vehicles, including tanks, on the streets.

Prigozhin said his forces faced no resistance from young conscripts as they crossed into Russia, saying his troops “aren’t fighting against children.”

“But we will destroy anyone who stands in our way,” he said in one of a series of angry video and audio recordings posted on social media beginning late Friday. “We are moving forward and will go until the end.”

The rebellion comes at a time when Russia is “fighting the toughest battle for its future,” Putin said, as Western governments heap sanctions on Moscow and arm Ukraine.

“The entire military, economic and information machine of the West is waged against us,” Putin said.

Russia’s security services, including the Federal Security Service, or FSB, called for Prigozhin’s arrest after he declared an armed rebellion late Friday.

In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin took the threat, authorities declared a “counterterrorist regime” in Moscow and its surroundings, allowing restricted freedoms and enhancing security in the capital.

It was not immediately clear how Prigozhin was able to enter the southern Russian city or how many troops he had with him.

Prigozhin said he wanted to punish Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu after he accused Russian government forces of attacking Wagner field camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery. He claimed that “a huge number of our comrades got killed.”

Prigozhin said Wagner’s forces shot down a Russian military helicopter that fired on a civilian convoy, but there was no independent confirmation of that.

He alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu, where they decided to destroy Wagner.

The Defense Ministry denied attacking the Wagner camps.

Prigozhin said he had 25,000 troops under his command and urged the army not to offer resistance.

After Putin’s address, in which he didn’t mention concrete steps to suppress the rebellion but rather called for unity, officials and state media personalities sought to reiterate their allegiance to the Kremlin and urged Prigozhin to back down.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, said lawmakers “stand for the consolidation of forces″ and support Putin, adding that “Wagner fighters must make the only right choice: to be with their people, on the side of the law, to protect the security and future of the Motherland, to follow the orders of the commander-in-chief.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed Volodin’s sentiment, saying in a Telegram post that “we have one commander in chief. Not two, not three. One.″

Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the Chechnya region who used to side with Prigozhin in his criticism of the military, also expressed his full support of Putin’s “every word.”

“We have the commander in chief, elected by the people, who knows the situation to the slightest detail better than any strategist and businessman,” Kadyrov said. “The mutiny needs to be suppressed.”

While the outcome of the confrontation was still unclear, it appeared likely to further hinder Moscow’s war effort as Kyiv’s forces probed Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive. The dispute, especially if Prigozhin were to prevail, also could have repercussions for Putin and his ability to maintain unity.

The Wagner forces have played a crucial role in Ukraine, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. But Prigozhin has increasingly criticized the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.

Zelenskyy noted the rebellion in his Telegram channel and said “anyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself.”

“For a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it,” he said. “Russia’s weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later.”

Prigozhin’s actions could have significant implications for the war. Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House think tank in London, said infighting between the Defense Ministry and Wagner will create confusion and potential division among Russian forces.

“Russian troops in Ukraine may well now be operating in a vacuum, without clear military instructions, and doubts about whom to obey and follow,″ Lutsevych said. “This creates a unique and unprecedented military opportunity for the Ukrainian army.”

Heavy military trucks and armored vehicles were seen in several parts of central Moscow early Saturday, and soldiers with assault rifles were deployed outside the main Defense Ministry building. The area around the presidential administration near Red Square was blocked, snarling traffic.

But even with the heightened military presence, downtown bars and restaurants were filled with customers. At one club near FSB headquarters, people were dancing in the street near the entrance.

Prigozhin, whose feud with the Defense Ministry dates back years, had refused to comply with a requirement that his forces sign contracts with the ministry before July 1. He said Friday he was ready for a compromise but “they have treacherously cheated us.”

Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, urged Wagner troops to stop any move against the army, saying it would play into the hands of Russia’s enemies who are “waiting to see the exacerbation of our domestic political situation.”

In Washington, the Institute for the Study of War said “the violent overthrow of Putin loyalists like Shoigu and Gerasimov would cause irreparable damage to the stability of Putin’s perceived hold on power.”

At the White House, National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said the administration was monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on the developments.

The leaders of European countries, including Italy and Poland, said they were monitoring developments closely, while Estonia, which borders Russia, stepped up border security.

___

Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-war

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June 24, 2023
Putin calls armed rebellion by mercenary chief a betrayal and vows to defend Russia

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President Vladimir Putin vowed Saturday to defend Russia against an armed rebellion by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his troops out of Ukraine and into a key city south of Moscow.

The uprising, which Putin called “a stab in the back,” was the biggest threat to his leadership in over two decades in power.

The private army led by Prigozhin appears to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow that runs Russian offensive operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence briefing.

As the fast-moving events unfolded in Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow is suffering “full-scale weakness” and that Kyiv was protecting Europe from “the spread of Russian evil and chaos.”

In his address, Putin called the uprising by Prigozhin, whom he did not mention by name, a “betrayal” and “treason.”

“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment,” Putin said. “The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders.”

Prigozhin called himself a patriot.

“Regarding the betrayal of the motherland, the president was deeply mistaken. We are patriots of our homeland,” he said in an audio message on his Telegram channel.

He said his fighters would not turn themselves in at the request of Putin, as “we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.”

Prigozhin’s private military contractor, known as Wagner, has been fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine. It wasn’t immediately clear what his aims were, but the rebellion marks an escalation in Prigozhin’s struggle with Russian military leaders, who he has accused of botching the war in Ukraine and hamstringing his forces in the field.

“This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin said.

Prigozhin confirmed Saturday he and his troops reached Rostov-on-Don after crossing the border from Ukraine.

He posted a video of himself at the Russian military headquarters in Rostov and claimed that his forces had taken control of the air field and other military facilities in the city. Other videos posted on social media showed military vehicles, including tanks, on the streets.

Prigozhin said his forces faced no resistance from young conscripts as they crossed into Russia, saying his troops “aren’t fighting against children.”

“But we will destroy anyone who stands in our way,” he said in one of a series of angry video and audio recordings posted on social media beginning late Friday. “We are moving forward and will go until the end.”

Putin condemned the rebellion, which comes at a time when Russia is “fighting the toughest battle for its future” as western governments heap sanctions on Moscow and arm Ukraine.

“The entire military, economic and information machine of the West is waged against us,” Putin said.

Russia’s security services, including the Federal Security Service, or FSB, called for Prigozhin’s arrest after he declared an armed rebellion late Friday.

In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin took the threat, authorities declared a “counterterrorist regime” in Moscow and its surroundings, allowing restricted freedoms and enhancing security in the capital.

It was not immediately clear how Prigozhin was able to enter the southern Russian city or how many troops he had with him.

Prigozhin said his aim was to punish Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu after Russian government forces attacked Wagner field camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu at which they decided to destroy Wagner, Prigozin said. He said Wagner’s forces shot down a Russian military helicopter that fired on a civilian convoy, but there was no independent confirmation.

Prigozhin said he had 25,000 troops under his command and urged the army not to offer resistance.

After Putin’s address, in which he didn’t mention concrete steps to suppress the rebellion but rather called for unity, officials and state media personalities in the country sought to publicly reiterate their allegiance to the Kremlin and urged Prigozhin to back down.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said lawmakers “stand for the consolidation of forces″ and support Putin, adding that “Wagner fighters must make the only right choice: to be with their people, on the side of the law, to protect the security and future of the Motherland, to follow the orders of the commander-in-chief.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed Volodin’s sentiment, saying in a Telegram post that “we have one commander in chief. Not two, not three. One.″

Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the Chechnya region who used to side with Prigozhin in his criticism of the military, also expressed his full support of Putin’s “every word.”

“We have the commander in chief, elected by the people, who knows the situation to the slightest detail better than any strategist and businessman,” Kadyrov said. “The mutiny needs to be suppressed.”

While the outcome of the confrontation was still unclear, it appeared likely to further hinder Moscow’s war effort as Kyiv’s forces probed Russian defenses in the initial stages of a counteroffensive. The dispute, especially if Prigozhin were to prevail, also could have repercussions for Putin and his ability to maintain unity.

The Wagner forces have played a crucial role in Ukraine, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place. But Prigozhin has increasingly criticized the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.

In his Telegram channel, Zelenskyy noted the rebellion and said “anyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself.”

“For a long time, Russia used propaganda to mask its weakness and the stupidity of its government. And now there is so much chaos that no lie can hide it,” he said. “Russia’s weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness. And the longer Russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later.”

Prigozhin’s actions could have significant implications for the war. Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House think tank in London, said infighting between the Defense Ministry and Wagner will create confusion and potential division among the Russian forces.

“Russian troops in Ukraine may well now be operating in a vacuum, without clear military instructions, and doubts about whom to obey and follow,″ Lutsevych said. “This creates a unique and unprecedented military opportunity for the Ukrainian army.”

Heavy military trucks and armored vehicles were seen in several parts of central Moscow early Saturday, and soldiers toting assault rifles were deployed outside the main building of the Defense Ministry. The area around the presidential administration near Red Square was blocked, snarling traffic.

But even with the heightened military presence, downtown bars and restaurants were filled with customers. At one club near the headquarters of the FSB, people were dancing in the street near the entrance.

Prigozhin, whose feud with the Defense Ministry dates back years, had refused to comply with a requirement that his forces sign contracts with the ministry before July 1. He said Friday he was ready for a compromise but “they have treacherously cheated us.”

“Today they carried out a rocket strike on our rear camps, and a huge number of our comrades got killed,” he said. The Defense Ministry denied attacking the Wagner camps.

“The evil embodied by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” he shouted.

Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian forcesin Ukraine, urged the Wagner troops to stop any move against the army, saying it would play into the hands of Russia’s enemies who are “waiting to see the exacerbation of our domestic political situation.”

In Washington, the Institute for the Study of War said “the violent overthrow of Putin loyalists like Shoigu and Gerasimov would cause irreparable damage to the stability of Putin’s perceived hold on power.”

At the White House, National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said the administration was monitoring the situation and will be consulting with allies and partners on the developments.

___

Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine-war

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June 24, 2023