Wagner private military chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus under a deal announced by the Kremlin, ending a rebellion by the heavily armed paramilitary group that posed the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin in his 23 years in power.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said late Saturday that criminal charges against Prigozhin for staging an armed uprising against the Russian military leadership would be dropped and the oligarch-turned-warlord would be allowed to go to Belarus.
Putin had mobilized Russian troops after Prigozhin led his rebel mercenaries on a brief insurgency that saw them occupy the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and approach Moscow in a convoy – an uprising that grabbed the world’s attention and raised the specter of civil war.
