Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on Cathedral Square in the Kremlin. (File)
Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow had paid just over $1 billion last year to the Wagner mercenary group, which staged a botched mutiny last week.
“The state paid 86.262 billion rubles (about $1 billion) to the Wagner group between May 2022 and May 2023 alone for combatant salaries and incentive awards,” President Putin said.
He spoke to defense officials in televised remarks at the start of a meeting.
Russia once denied the existence of Wagner, a shadowy mercenary army that defends Moscow’s interests with operations in several states in Africa and the Middle East.
But since his fighters became one of the mainstays of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Wagner’s chief, former Kremlin catering contractor Yevgeny Prigozhin, has gone public.
On Saturday, Wagner launched a revolt, ostensibly to resist attempts to subsum it into the official defense ministry—seized an army headquarters and marched on Moscow.
Vladimir Putin has condemned this as treason and ordered Wagner to lose his heavy weapons while his fighters join the regular forces or accept exile in Belarus.
And by revealing the sheer size of official spending on Wagner’s services, Vladimir Putin has confirmed that it has, in fact, acted as an arm of the state.
“The content of the entire Wagner group was provided entirely by the state, from the defense ministry, from the state budget. We fully funded this group,” President Putin said.
That Wagner’s leaders will now be portrayed as traitors is a reversal in the reporting of the Russian state. Previously, the group enjoyed heroic status as part of the offensive in Ukraine.
Even while criticizing Wagner in the aftermath of Saturday’s uprising, Vladimir Putin was clear not to attack ordinary troops, “because they really showed courage and heroism”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)