Russian mercenaries call off march to Moscow after Putin vows to punish organizers

A Russian mercenary army late Saturday abruptly halted its march on Moscow as President Vladimir Putin vowed to punish the rebellion’s commanders in the most serious challenge to date of the Russian leader’s more than 2-decade-old grip on power.

The seemingly short-lived insurrection against the Kremlin’s military leaders shook Putin’s authority like no other crisis in nearly a generation and threatened to alter the course of the war in Ukraine.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the private army known as the Wagner Group, said his armored forces had advanced to within 125 miles of the Russian capital after seizing control of Russia’s main rear logistical hub for its war in Ukraine, the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

“We turn our columns around, and depart in the opposite direction,” Prigozhin said on the messaging app Telegram. His apparent stand-down — which he portrayed as a desire to avoid bloodshed — came hours after Putin, in an emergency address to the nation, called the uprising a “betrayal” and a “deadly threat” to the Russian state.

The deal to halt the movement of Wagner forces was brokered by Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, according to Lukashenko’s office.

The Kremlin said that Prigozhin would move to Belarus, charges against him would be dropped and troops participating would not be prosecuted. Wagner fighters who did not take part in the insurrection will be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry, authorities in Moscow said.

In his earlier speech, Putin had vowed to punish those behind the uprising, the culmination of Prigozhin’s bitter feud with Russia’s defense establishment.

The uprising was framed as a strike against Russia’s top military commanders, whose removal Prigozhin has demanded, rather than Putin himself. But it marks the latest calamitous blowback — staggeringly high military casualties, economic woes, diplomatic near-isolation — in a war that Kremlin planners had envisioned as a swift takeover of its smaller neighbor, a onetime Soviet republic.

For much of the day, Prigozhin’s rebel convoy moved northward in the direction of Moscow, 700 miles away, meeting little resistance, although Russian military helicopters reportedly opened fire on the procession at one point.

Read more: Russia's Wagner militia says it's handing control of Bakhmut over to Moscow

Whatever the next moves are, the uprising was a shocking episode in a country that Putin has ruled with an iron fist for nearly a quarter-century. And it reveals a fragility to Putin’s authority. It is not fully clear now what Prigozhin’s future is and what exactly motivated him to back down.

The prospect of a nuclear-armed superpower falling into disarray terrified neighboring countries throughout Europe and put the White House on alert. President Biden on Saturday was briefed in a rare meeting of all senior U.S. officials from intelligence, Defense and diplomatic parts of government. Officials in numerous European capitals went into emergency sessions. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in urgent consultations with his counterparts in six nations, including Germany and Japan, as well as the European Union as all sought to make sense of the rapidly unfolding developments.

“It looks like Putin’s power of centralized, vertical strong government control is in question for the first time,” said Rajan Menon, a political scientist who specializes in war and ethics at City University of New York and Columbia University.

While not immediately clear how, the crisis in Russia was bound to affect the war in Ukraine.

The bizarre turn of events across the border was regarded with caution by Ukrainian officials. While most said it was too soon to say how the turmoil might affect the battlefield picture, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that it showed Ukraine stands as a bulwark against “the spread of Russian evil and chaos.”

Read more: Welcome to the Wagner-verse, where action films serve up propaganda for Russia’s notorious mercenary army

Many ordinary Ukrainians reacted to word of Putin’s troubles with unrestrained glee. The 16-month-old war has leveled entire cities, pummeled national infrastructure, sent millions of Ukrainians fleeing their homes and killed and maimed thousands of civilians.

An overnight missile barrage on the capital, Kyiv, killed at least three people, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Prigozhin’s mercenaries have fought alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, where they have been known for their use of spectacularly brutal tactics. During the bloody struggle for the eastern city of Bakhmut, Wagner used prisoner recruits for “human wave” attacks and executed those from its own ranks who faltered or tried to run away.

In what was described as an emergency address to the nation, Putin did not mention Prigozhin by name, but vowed to crush those taking part in the uprising.

For his part, Prigozhin refrained from criticizing Putin’s rule directly, but cast himself as a popular savior against “corruption, deceit and bureaucracy.” He said the Russian president was “deeply mistaken” in describing the rebellion as an assault on the homeland.

“We are patriots,” he said in an audio message posted on his Telegram channel, calling the uprising a “march of justice.”

Few Western journalists have remained in Russia after the March arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and a concerted campaign against independent Russian media that began almost as soon as the invasion occurred. Criticism of the military or the government’s conduct of the war is treated as a criminal offense.

Read more: Owner of Russia's Wagner Group threatens to pull troops out of Ukraine's Bakhmut

In part because of that, many questions about the uprising remain unanswered. Social media images posted by onlookers in Rostov-on-Don have shown military vehicles in the streets around the headquarters.

Prigozhin posted a video of himself, purportedly taken inside, and said Wagner troops who took part in the rebellion had crossed over from Ukraine with virtually no resistance from Russian troops.

In their march toward Moscow, Wagner elements did not seem to meet much resistance, according to reports from Russia.

Although the threat to Putin is manifesting itself from within, the Russian president — as he has throughout the war — railed against the West as the enemy and instigator. Russia, he declared, is the target of “the entire military, economic and information machine of the West.”

Prigozhin had denounced the Russian military establishment for months with no apparent repercussions, seemingly with tacit permission from Putin. But his declaration of armed rebellion, issued late Friday, crossed a line and triggered a call by authorities for his arrest.

Putin, who has taken harsh measures to quell any domestic dissent since the February 2022 invasion, suggested a crackdown against perceived conspirators was already beginning in the Russian capital.

“Additional anti-terrorist security measures are now being implemented in Moscow, Moscow region, and a number of other regions,” he said, adding that “decisive actions would be taken to stabilize the situation” in Rostov-on-Don.

Read more: Russia’s Defense Ministry reports Wagner group has taken Bakhmut

But he acknowledged that the situation in the southern city, which is a major center of operations for the Ukraine war, remained “difficult.”

In recent months, Prigozhin has taken ever-sharpening aim at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the military General Staff. But he dramatically escalated his rhetoric in a series of angry messages over a period of about 24 hours, accusing the pair of ordering attacks on Wagner positions inside Ukraine.

Russia’s Defense Ministry denied the claim.

Prigozhin’s longer-term strategy remained unclear. Menon said the man once known as Putin’s chef, because of his lucrative restaurant businesses, was not thought to be a gambler who would take uncalculated, suicidal risks. He could still have backing within Putin’s inner circle that is unknown to Western observers, or some other reason to believe he will prevail.

“This goes beyond fighting a war in Ukraine,” Menon said. “This is playing for keeps.”

Times staff writers King and Wilkinson reported from Kyiv and Washington, respectively. Staff writer Erin Logan in Washington contributed to this report.

Sign up for Essential California, your daily guide to news, views and life in the Golden State.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.