In Surreal Twist, Putin Says Russia’s Wagner Mercenary Group ‘Doesn’t Exist’

President Putin said that the Wagner private military company “simply doesn’t exist” as a legal entity, in comments adding to the series of often bizarre twists that have followed the group’s abortive revolt last month — the most serious threat to Mr. Putin’s 23-year rule amid the war in Ukraine.“There is no law on private military organizations. It simply doesn’t exist,” Mr. Putin told a Russian newspaper late Thursday, referring to the Wagner group.The Russian leader recounted to Kommersant his own version of a Kremlin event attended by 35 Wagner commanders, including the group’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on June 29. That meeting came just five days after Mr. Prigozhin and his troops staged a stunning but short-lived rebellion against Moscow authorities.The meeting was disclosed earlier this week by a Kremlin official.Mr. Putin said that at the talks, Wagner rejected an offer to keep its troops in Ukraine, where they have played key battlefield roles, under the leadership of their direct commander.“All of them could have gathered in one place and continued to serve,” Mr. Putin told the newspaper, “And nothing would have changed for them. They would have been led by the same person who had been their real commander all along.”Mr. Putin has previously said that Wagner troops had to choose whether to sign contracts with the Russian defense ministry, move to neighboring Belarus, or retire from service. According to him, though “many nodded” when he made his proposal, Mr. Prigozhin rejected the idea, responding that “the boys won’t agree with such a decision.”This, Mr. Putin said, was one of “several employment options” put forward at the meeting. During the revolt that lasted less than 24 hours, Mr. Prigozhin’s mercenaries quickly swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot, before driving to within about 125 miles of Moscow. Mr. Prigozhin described the move as a “march of justice” to oust the military leaders, who demanded that Wagner sign contracts with the defense ministry by July 1. What remain cloudy are the fate of Mr. Prigozhin and the terms of a deal that ended the armed rebellion by offering amnesty for him and his mercenaries, along with permission, to move to Belarus. Wagner mercenaries are completing the handover of weapons to the Russian military, the defense ministry said Wednesday.Their disarming of Wagner reflects efforts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat they posed and also appears to herald an end to the mercenary group’s operations on the battlefield in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces are engaged in a counteroffensive.Separately, a Russian general in charge of forces fighting in southern Ukraine has been relieved of his duties after speaking out about problems faced by his troops, a move that reflected new cracks in Russia’s military command following the brief Wagner rebellion.Major General Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th army in the Zaporizhzhia region, which is a focal point in Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive, said in an audio statement to his troops released Wednesday night that he was dismissed after a meeting with the military brass in what he described as a “treacherous” stab in the back to Russian forces in Ukraine.General Popov said the military leadership was angered by his frank talk about challenges faced by his forces, particularly the shortage of radars tracking enemy artillery, which has resulted in high numbers of Russian casualties. “The top officers apparently saw me as a source of threat and rapidly issued an order to get rid of me, which was signed by the defense minister in just one day,” he said. “The Ukrainian military has failed to break through our army’s defenses, but the top commander hit us in the rear, treacherously and cowardly beheading the army at this most difficult moment.”General Popov, who uses the call name “Spartacus,” addressed his troops as “my gladiators” in the audio message released by a retired general, Andrei Gurulev, who commanded the 58th army in the past and currently serves as a lawmaker. The 58th army consists of several divisions and smaller units.Many military bloggers argued that General Popov’s dismissal eroded troop morale at a time of relentless Ukrainian attacks. One blogger, Vladislav Shurygin, said it has dealt a “terrible blow to the entire army,” while another, Roman Saponkov, described it as a “monstrous terror attack against the army’s morale.”News of the dismissal added to the blow that Russian troops received when another senior officer, Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, was killed Tuesday by a Ukrainian missile strike.

In Surreal Twist, Putin Says Russia’s Wagner Mercenary Group ‘Doesn’t Exist’

In Surreal Twist, Putin Says Russia’s Wagner Mercenary Group ‘Doesn’t Exist’

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