The biggest challenge that the Russian president Vladimir Putin faced in his more than two decades in power vanished after a rebel paramilitary commander who had ordered his troops to march on Moscow reached a sudden agreement with the Kremlin to go into exile and order the withdrawal.
The brief revolt has exposed vulnerabilities in Russian government forces, as Wagner Group soldiers commanded by Yevgeny Prigozhin they moved unopposed towards the Russian city of Rostov on Don and advanced hundreds of kilometers in the direction of Moscow. The Russian armed forces also moved quickly to defend the Russian capital.
Under the agreement that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on Saturday, Prigozhin will go into exile in neighboring Belarus, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The charges against Prigozhin of organizing an armed rebellion will be dropped.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said the rebellion shows the “weakness” of Russia and the self-destructive drift that the country would have taken when launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.