Summary


*Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, is to leave Russia for Belarus after calling off his troops' rebellion.

*Wagner fighters were filmed leaving the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a major Russian military post that they had taken control of.

*Prigozhin and his troops will not be prosecuted despite being accused of armed mutiny, the Kremlin says.

*President Vladimir Putin had decried Prigozhin's actions as "treason" in a national TV address on Saturday.

*But the situation de-escalated just as Wagner troops were heading towards the capital, Moscow.

The deal to end the rebellion came from negotiations between Prigozhin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

'Ukraine pleased their enemy is in disarray'

Ukraine's forces are in a good position to exploit weaknesses in Russia's army caused by Prigozhin's attempted rebellion, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, has said.

Taylor said Ukraine was already preparing to commit its forces into its counteroffensive before the uprising, and is "pleased that their enemy is in disarray".

Ukrainian troops know they need to move now as Putin could regenerate his forces over the long term, Taylor added.

"They've been preparing their new brigades, newly equipped, newly trained, ready to go," he told BBC News.

What will the Wagner mercenaries do next?

Putin does not like betrayal. He hates it. He absolutely loathes it.

So to have the Kremlin say criminal charges are being dropped against all the Wagner troops involved in the mutiny is frankly quite hard to believe. Let’s see how it works going forward.

We are also told that those who were not involved can go back to their positions, and return to the fight.

But there is a key difference.

The Wagner Group was being absorbed into the defence ministry. Its days as a mercenary group independently operating and financed were coming to an end.

Its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had a long-running feud with the ministry, and was resisting his troops being absorbed into it.

I think that is what pushed Prigozhin to such radial action.

Whether or not those Wagner fighters will sign contracts and join the Russian defence ministry is a question yet to be answered.

This is still not over for Putin. It is a crisis that has been averted, but I don’t think he’s completely overcome it yet.

Key trigger for Wagner rebellion was in early June - US report


We've been bringing you reports from US media that the White House knew about the Wagner rebellion ahead of time. Well, the US may have picked up that Yevgeny Prigozhin was planning something as early as mid-June, according to US officials speaking to the Washington Post.

A key trigger was a decree on 10 June by Russia's defence ministry ordering all volunteer detachments - like the Wagner Group - to sign contracts with the government, which would effectively be a takeover of Prigozhin's mercenary troops.

Officials told the paper “there were enough signals to be able to tell the leadership … that something was up” - but the exact nature of Prigozhin's plans weren't clear until shortly before the mutiny began.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was also told by his own intelligence that Prigozhin was plotting something, the paper reported.

It is not clear precisely when he was told, but it was “definitely more than 24 hours ago”, the paper quoted a US official as saying on Saturday.

Source:BBCNEWS.

I love Putin . Death to all the capitalist pigs