- Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin posted an 11-minute audio message on Telegram Monday.
- In the message, the Wagner boss expresses "regret" for shooting down Russian military aircraft.
Yevgeny Prigozhin has spoken out for the first time since his Wagner Group mutiny ended in a murky peace agreement, expressing "regret" for having shot down Russian military aircraft but claiming he was given no choice.
The head of Wagner, a normally prolific poster, had remained conspicuously quiet in the day and a half after he had abruptly called off his march on the Russian capital following a reported deal negotiated by the president of Belarus.
But in an audio message posted to his official press channel on Telegram on Monday — more than 11 minutes long — the mercenary leader explained that he decided against entering Moscow to avoid certain bloodshed. The intent was to make a point, he said: "We went to demonstrate our protest, not to overthrow the government."
Prigozhin acknowledged the intervention of the Belarusian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who he said "extended his hand" and offered to find a way for Wagner to continue operating " in a legitimate jurisdiction." He did not confirm that he has agreed to exile in Belarus, as claimed by Russian officials, nor offer any indication of his current whereabouts.
He also did not apologize for his mutiny, saying only that he was sorry he was forced by circumstances to engage in an armed rebellion.
"We regret that we had to hit air assets, but those assets were dropping bombs and launching missile strikes," Prigozhin said. And in a dig at his enemies in the military establishment, he argued that if Russia's armed forces had been able to advance in Ukraine as rapidly as Wagner's had in Russia itself — seizing the city of Rostov-on-Don, home to a military command center and more than one million people, and making it within striking distance of the capital — "then, perhaps, the special operation would have lasted a day."
According to the warlord, whose forces have served as shock troops in Ukraine and deployed across Africa, he launched his "march for justice" to preserve his private military company in the face of an effort to absorb its fighters by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which had announced an effective take over of such mercenary forces on July 1. He also wanted accountability for Russia's military leadership, namely Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
"The purpose of the campaign was not to allow the destruction of the Wagner PMC and to bring to justice those individuals who through their unprofessional actions made a huge number of mistakes," Prigozhin said, insisting that the "public demanded it."
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