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Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Russian state has paid billions of dollars to the paramilitary group Wagner, as more details emerged of the deal that ended last weekend’s insurgency.
Putin admitted for the first time on Tuesday — after years of Kremlin denials — that Wagner had been “fully funded” by the state, with payments of 86 billion rupees ($1 billion) from May 2022 to May 2023 and another 110 billion rupees in insurance payments.
His comments came as the country’s president, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, confirmed his presence in Belarus, and Russia’s defense ministry announced it had control of the paramilitary’s heavy weapons.
Putin is now moving to integrate the group into the official army after Prigozhin’s failed rally in Moscow on Saturday.
In addition to direct payments to Wagner, Putin said Concorde, Prigozhin’s catering company, received an additional 80 billion rupees in army supply contracts.
Putin added: “I hope no one stole anything, or didn’t steal much, but we will sort it out.”
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who brokered the deal that ended the rebellion, said “security guarantees . . . have been provided” to ensure Prigozhin’s safe passage from Russia, adding that the founder of Wagner “is in Belarus today.”
Lukashenko said that Wagner fighters had returned to base camps in the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, days after they took control of the Russian city of Rostov and headed towards Moscow in an unprecedented test of Putin’s authority.
Tuesday’s developments came as Putin sought to reassert control after striking what many supporters of his war in Ukraine have claimed were embarrassing concessions to Wagner.
The FSB, Russia’s main security service, said it closed its investigation into the weekend’s mutiny because the participants had “stopped activities directly aimed at committing the crime,” according to state news agency RIA Novosti.
And while the Kremlin said, in the aftermath of the failed rebellion, that the charges would be dropped, they later remained in force, apparently in an effort to pressure Wagner into sticking to the agreement.
Some of Putin’s supporters expressed disappointment with the Russian president’s turn, and chose to leave Wagner without charges even after the paramilitaries captured a southern military headquarters and marched most of the way to Moscow, killing at least 13 Russian soldiers in the process.
The decision not to press charges over the country’s first coup attempt in three decades was a major turnaround after Putin denounced Prigozhin as a “stab in the back”.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said the Russian leader had decided not to prosecute Prigozhin to avoid bloodshed.
“There was a desire not to allow the worst-case scenario,” Peskov said on Tuesday. “There have been some promises, and agreements are in the works.” Putin always keeps his word.
Putin spent Tuesday meeting with soldiers and officers in the security service, praising them for what he said was their role in stopping the uprising, even as some of their leaders admitted they had done little.
At a ceremony outside the Kremlin’s ornate Christian Orthodox churches, Putin said Russia’s security forces had “essentially stopped a civil war” and held a minute’s silence for the pilots killed against the advance of the Wagner paramilitary group on Saturday, saying they had “fulfilled their duty honorably”.
Putin said the men “stood in the way of unrest, which would inevitably lead to chaos”.
Wagner did not immediately confirm whether it would hand over its weapons to the Russian Defense Ministry, whose leaders have been the main target of Prigozhin’s wrath for months as the invasion of Ukraine stalled.
After attending Putin’s speech in the Kremlin on Tuesday, Viktor Zolotov, the head of the National Guard and the president’s former bodyguard, said they discussed giving his units heavy weapons.
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