MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia had paid out last year over $1 billion to the Wagner group, which last week carried out a failed mutiny attempt.
Putin Says Moscow Paid $1 bn to Wagner
“Russia paid to the Wagner mercenary group around $1 billion for salaries for fighters and incentive rewards from May 2022 to May 2023,” Putin disclosed. Putin expressed these remarks during a meeting with the defence officials. Moscow once refused the very existence of Wagner, a mercenary group that defends Russia’s interests with operations in Africa and in the Middle East.
On Saturday, the mercenary group launched a revolt — apparently to resist efforts to fold it into the ministry of defence — held an army headquarters and marched towards Moscow.
President Putin has denounced this as a betrayal, and issued order that the group lose its heavy weaponry, while its men either join the regular army or shift to Belarus.
And by disclosing the huge scale of official spending on group’s services, President Putin has confirmed that it has effectively been acting as an organ of the state.
“The content of the Wagner was completely provided by the Russian state, from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), from the country’s budget. We completely funded Wagner,” Putin said.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that the organizers of the Wagner mutiny would be “brought to justice”. Putin said that “the majority” of the Wagner were patriots of Russia. He added that “By turning back,” the fighters of Wagner avoided further bloodshed in the country. State-run media reported that the Russian President expressed these views during a speech to the nation after the Wagner mutiny. Putin claimed Ukraine and the West wanted Russian people to “kill each other’” and also warned that any attempt at blackmail or disturbance in his country was “doomed to fail”.
Putin told the people of Russia that public solidarity demonstrated that any attempts to create internal disturbance are doomed to failure. He said, “The highest consolidation of society was shown at every level,”.
The Russian President said that a solid position of support for the constitutional order was taken by all, including public organizations, political parties and the entire Russian society.
