- Rebelling Russian mercenary forces marched all the way to the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday.
- Yevgeny Prigozhin then stopped short of entering Moscow to avoid bloodshed, he announced.
As the mercenary Wagner Group marched toward Moscow on Saturday — a move against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense — neighboring countries compared the uprising to a cage match.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group and a former Putin ally, said he was leading 25,000 soldiers on a "march for justice" to overthrow Russia's military leadership amid its ongoing war in Ukraine.
As all eyes were on Russia during the Wagner Group's stunning advance, Lithuania's prime minister compared the rebellion to poisonous spiders trapped in a jar.
"Spiders in a jar is an unpleasant spectacle but the end result is always a reduced amount of poison, whatever the outcome," Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė tweeted on June 24. "The more 'World's 2nd strongest army' is preoccupied with the 'counteroffensive' among its own ranks, the less work is left for Ukraine."
However, one of the spiders in Šimonytė's metaphor might have escaped. Putin's presidential plane was spotted fleeing Moscow on Saturday. It appeared to be en route to St. Petersburg before disappearing from radars. Russian officials denied Putin had left Moscow.
Russian security forces meanwhile took positions inside Moscow to protect against a looming Wagner advance. The city announced it would set up anti-terror measures — like checkpoints — along roadways into the city.
Putin called the uprising a "betrayal" on Saturday and a "stab in the back."
Prigozhin announced on Telegram later on Saturday that he was ordering his forces to turn around after reaching the outskirts of the capital. It remained unclear if the Wagner boss managed to strike some kind of deal with Putin.
NATO allies on Russia's border said they are securing their borders in light of the insurrection inside Russia. Leaders in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Norway said they were monitoring the situation on Saturday and strengthening security measures.