‘Traitors must be shot’: Vladimir Putin’s truce with Wagner teeters on edge

There is no way that the Wagner group doesn't end up liquidated. Putin is not one to suffer insults or challenges to his power.

The truce is the oldest trick in the book, when dealing with traitor. sure! we'll bring you back into the fold! Seizes assessment and arms. Now that we are all good friends, can you get your men to just stand over here by this long dtich?

Armed Wagner fighters roam Voronezh in southern Russia eating shawarmas. Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to ranting against the defence ministry — while treason charges against the warlord have been revived.

Two days after the Kremlin struck a deal to end Wagner’s armed uprising, the truce is teetering on the edge, with growing questions in Russia over whether the bargain will hold. The Kremlin has seized billions of roubles in cash and gold bars from Prigozhin, squeezing Wagner’s finances. But some fervent loyalists of president Vladimir Putin are proposing even more unforgiving solutions.

“I am fiercely convinced that in wartime, traitors must be shot,” said Andrei Gurulyov, a prominent pro-war MP, on state television on Sunday. “Whatever fairy tales they tell you, the only way out for Prigozhin is a bullet in the head.” The first indication of the deal’s fragility came on Monday, when state newswires cited sources saying that — contrary to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s promises — Prigozhin was still under investigation for organising the mutiny.

The leak suggested that Russia wanted to maintain pressure on Prigozhin, who resurfaced hours later in a voice message and claimed his mutiny had been a simple act of self-preservation. The insurrection was to stop Wagner being dismantled on July 1, he said, and contrary to reports, his fighters would not be joining the regular armed forces.

“The situation has not been resolved as far as I can tell. And the terms that Peskov announced are not sustainable terms,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Nor has Wagner’s activity in Russia fully subsided, despite promises that it would return to base camps in Ukraine.

On Sunday evening, locals in Voronezh saw Wagner fighters shopping in a supermarket, even though officials had said they left the city that morning. As the Wagner fighters left, shawarmas in hand from a nearby stand, one “young guy had a rapturous, impudent look. As if everything was fine and nothing really happened, and they’re all going home,” said Vladimir, a teacher in Voronezh.

Several Wagner hotlines across Russia, reached by phone on Monday, told the Financial Times they were still recruiting new fighters. “Recruitment is ongoing,” one of them said. “Nobody has put a stop to the recruitment.” The first big issue is whether Prigozhin — who has yet to confirm his whereabouts — will indeed go into exile in Belarus, as the Kremlin suggested.

One person who has known the warlord since the early 1990s, when Putin visited a restaurant Prigozhin owned, said Belarus was probably a jump-off point for him to return to running Wagner’s longstanding mercenary activities in Africa. “Alexander Grigorevich [Lukashenko, the Belarus president] doesn’t need him there under any circumstances . . . and doesn’t have the kind of money to keep him there,” the person said. Instead, Prigozhin “will keep going [all the way to] Africa”.

The coup attempt, however, calls into question what influence Prigozhin can retain over Wagner’s operations from exile. Though nominally independent, Wagner’s mercenary operations in Africa were partly funded and equipped by the Russian government, which used the group as a convenient pretext to deny its official involvement in conflicts there.

“It’s a synergistic relationship, because Wagner can’t operate without that kind of support,” Lee said. “It’s allowed to make money on its own, but it has to basically be furthering Russian foreign policy. So would they be OK with him no longer being subordinate to Putin?” Wagner’s finances are an important component of its involvement in the Ukraine invasion — so much so that they appear to have been a big trigger for the revolt.

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