Top Russian MP wants mutiny runaways punished
Civil servants who opted to get out of Russia during the failed revolt by the Wagner private military company (PMC) have betrayed their country and should be held accountable, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has said.
“We all condemn those who left the country in this difficult moment,” Volodin said during a parliament session on Tuesday.
What those individuals did was a “betrayal,” he argued, adding that it especially concerned those employed by the Russian state.
“We need to find out if some of the civil servants took such a step, committed an unseemly act” because in this case working for the state isn’t for them, the speaker argued.
Volodin instructed the Duma’s Security Committee and the law enforcement agencies “to analyze if any of those occupying significant positions in civil service, government agencies, joint-stock companies and corporations left the country lately, and make this information public.”
Plane ticket prices from Russia to neighboring Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and some other destinations spiked on Saturday as some fled following reports of mutiny by the PMC.
The Wagner Group, which was instrumental to the Russian capture of the strategic city of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) from Ukraine in May, launched its mutiny late on Friday. The head of the PMC Evgeny Prigozhin said he had ordered the insurrection because the Russian Defense Ministry wanted to disband his company. Wagner troops seized control of a Russian military headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don and sent an armed convoy towards Moscow.
The revolt was stopped on Saturday night as Prigozhin announced that his men would be returning to their field camps, following talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. According to Minsk, the negotiations were held in close coordination with Putin.
The Kremlin said Prigozhin would leave Russia and go to Belarus under the terms of the agreement. Wagner troops who participated in the mutiny will also avoid prosecution, it added.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed on Tuesday that the criminal case against Wagner and Prigozhin had been dropped. According to Putin, the PMC’s soldiers now have the choice of signing a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry and other security agencies, of returning home, or moving to Belarus.
