Putin met Prigozhin in Moscow after Wagner mutiny

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Kremlin after the paramilitary group’s aborted mutiny last month, according to Russian media reports.

“This meeting took place in the Kremlin on June 29. It lasted almost three hours,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to state-owned newswire Ria Novosti.

Prigozhin rebelled against the Russian military establishment on June 23, seizing the city of Rostov-on-Don the next morning and sending his Wagner Group mercenaries on a march to Moscow. The mutinous warlord only turned his tanks around as they came within 200 kilometers of the Russian capital and threatened to tip the country into civil war.

Thirty-five people were invited to attend the high-stakes Moscow meeting, including “all the commanders of the military detachments” and Prigozhin, Peskov said.

During the meeting in the Kremlin, Putin “gave an assessment of the company’s actions” on the front line in Ukraine and of “the events of [the rebellion on] June 24,” the spokesperson said.

The Wagner commanders were then offered “further options for employment and further combat use,” Peskov said, adding that the paramilitaries said they were “ready to continue to fight” for Russia.

“Putin listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them further options for employment and further combat use,” Peskov added.

After the mutiny was aborted following talks between Prigozhin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who negotiated a climbdown from the mercenaries, the Wagner leader was supposed to be exiled to Belarus.

He has not, however, been seen in public since. Lukashenko initially confirmed that Prigozhin had popped up in Belarus, before later saying that he wasn’t actually there — and could even be in Russia.

Usually very active on social media, oligarch-turned warlord Prigozhin has been discreet since the mutiny ended — only appearing a couple times on Telegram.

Wagner troops have been involved in some of the bloodiest fighting in Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including in the city of Bakhmut which was battered for months by invading Russian forces during the winter and spring.

This story is being updated.