The Russian government has decided to drop the charges against Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and others involved in the armed rebellion last week, several media reports stated. According to AFP, Russia's FSB security services announced Tuesday that it was dropping a case against fighters of the Wagner mercenary group accused of staging an armed mutiny to topple the country's military leadership. According to PTI, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said its investigation found that those involved in the mutiny “ceased activities directed at committing the crime.”
As per the report, the charge of mounting an armed mutiny carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison. Prigozhin escaping prosecution poses a stark contrast to how the Kremlin has been treating those staging anti-government protests.
Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Prigozhin remained a mystery Tuesday, The Kremlin has said Prigozhin would be exiled to neighbouring Belarus, but neither he nor the Belarusian authorities have confirmed that. An independent Belarusian military monitoring project Belaruski Hajun said a business jet that Prigozhin reportedly uses landed near Minsk on Tuesday morning, reported PTI.
In his first address after the Wagner rebellion that briefly shook Russia to its core, President Vladimir Putin late Monday night claimed that the uprising was “doomed to fail” adding that the country showed “unity” in the face of a “treacherous” rebellion, reported The Guardian. He accused the leaders of last weekend's mutiny of wanting "to see Russia choked in bloody strife" and vowed to bring the organisers of the attack ‘to justice’, the report added.
In an unscheduled late-night televised address late, Putin said: “Any blackmail or way to bring confusion to Russia is doomed to failure … I made steps to avoid large-scale bloodshed.”
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