Fighters from the powerful mercenary group Wagner today left the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don a day after threatening to overthrow the government.
“A Wagner column left Rostov and headed to their field camps,” governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram. On Saturday, the mercenaries had seized control of a key military base in the city.
The feud between Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian army came to a violent head on Saturday, with his forces capturing a key army headquarters in southern Russia and then heading north to threaten the capital.
The chief of the rebel Wagner mercenary force will go to Belarus and will not face charges after calling off his troops’ advance on Moscow, the Russian government said, easing the country’s most serious security crisis in decades.
Visuals released by the Wagner group on Telegram group showed a huge crowd cheering as the Wagner forces left the town in their armoured vehicles and tanks.
Dozens were cheering and chanting “Wagner! Wagner!” outside the military headquarters Wagner had captured.
People even lined up to take pictures with the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The events capped a day of escalating drama that saw Prigozhin take convoys of his fighters to within hours of the capital virtually unchallenged, even after President Vladimir Putin accused the mercenary group of “treason” in a TV broadcast to the nation.
The tide shifted suddenly in the evening when Prigozhin made the stunning announcement that his troops were “turning our columns around and going back to field camps” to avoid bloodshed in the Russian capital.
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