- The leader of the Wagner Group said his fighters took a Russian military headquarters without firing a shot.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin said Wagner is on a "march for justice" as his troops appear headed for Moscow.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, said his men captured a key Russian military center without firing a single shot.
Wagner Group fighters marched into the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, taking control of all military installations in the city, Prigozhin claimed.
"Without firing a shot, we captured the headquarters building. We have not interfered with the work of a single person," Prigozhin said in Telegram post on Saturday, according to CNN.
Prigozhin called the mutiny a "march of justice" and claimed to have the support of the Russian people.
"We were attacked from the beginning by artillery and then by helicopters, and we passed without a single shot," Prigozhin said. "We did not touch a single conscript. We didn't kill a single person along the way."
A former ally of Putin's, Prigozhin has been in a war of words with Russia's top military brass for months. The tensions have sometimes spilled over into armed conflict and Prigozhin has repeatedly broken the chain of command. He now appears to have gone fully rogue. On Friday, Prigozhin called Russia's defense ministry "evil" and said it "must be stopped" after an alleged Russian missile strike killed several Wagner troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Wagner Group's mutiny a "betrayal" and "a stab in the back for our troops and the people of Russia," according to a translation by The Telegraph.
"Those who mutiny have betrayed Russia and I urge anybody involved in it to cease any kind of participation in armed conflict," Putin said.