Russia drops charges over Wagner mutiny, reports say

Russian authorities have closed the mutiny probe into the Wagner Group, run by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, state-owned media reported Tuesday.

“During the investigation of the criminal case initiated by the investigative department of the Russian Federal Security Service on June 23 under Article 279 of the Criminal Code on the fact of an armed mutiny, it was found that its participants on June 24 stopped the actions directly aimed at committing a crime,” said a statement from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), RIA Novosti reported.

“Given this and other circumstances relevant to the investigation, the investigating authority issued a decision to terminate the criminal case on June 27,” said the security service.

RIA also reported that preparations were underway to transfer heavy military equipment from the Wagner Group to Russia’s official armed forces.

Prigozhin — who has railed against Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov over their handling of the war in Ukraine — and his Wagner mercenaries seized Russian cities on Saturday and marched to within 200 kilometers of Moscow.

Speaking on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Wagner of “treason,” said the mutiny risked tipping Russia into civil war and vowed to harshly punish all those who had orchestrated it.

But in a climbdown, Putin later Saturday evening agreed to allow Prigozhin to go into exile in Belarus and escape prosecution over his role in the mutiny, under a deal negotiated by the country’s authoritarian ruler Alexander Lukashenko.

A plane belonging to the Wagner Group landed at a military airfield some 20 kilometers from Minsk on Tuesday morning, according to reports.