An expert has speculated that the Wagner Group leader decided against continuing the march to Moscow because of adverse odds and thus ordered his forces to turn around and return to Ukraine in an effort to avert bloodshed. Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin made the announcement on Saturday, saying he hoped it would quell further bloodshed.
According to former CIA station head and Fox News Digital commentator Dan Hoffman, Prigozhin decided against an assault on Moscow because he knew his odds of success were low. And as a result, Prigozhin is now, without a shadow of a doubt, an opponent of Vladimir Putin, as Hoffman pointed out.
That’s one of the results of this, Hoffman said. It’s not possible to follow in his footsteps and seize control of the Rostov military district without becoming an enemy of Vladimir Putin.
When Prigozhin said they were only 120 miles from Moscow, he gave the order to turn around. After meeting with Putin, the office of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that an agreement had been reached with Prigozhin. Lukashenko’s government claims that Prigozhin consented to an arrangement offering security guarantees to the Wagner Group in exchange for redirecting his soldiers.
Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Charles Kupchan said that the confrontation between the Wagner Group and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will not have a major impact on the situation in Ukraine. According to Kupchan, a former member of Obama’s National Security Council, the battlefield dynamics are unlikely to change until a civil war breaks out, in which case Putin may recall military units from eastern Ukraine to defend the regime in Russia.
On Friday, Prigozhin released a series of videos and audio recordings in which he vehemently accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a rocket strike on the field camps where the Wagner Group is stationed in Ukraine to support Russian forces. Prigozhin called the events taking place in the country a “march of justice” rather than a military coup, insisting that the “scum” in the country’s military leadership had to be stopped. The Russian Defense Ministry has said that it had nothing to do with the rocket attack.
According to the state news agency Taas, the Federal Security Services’ National Anti-Terrorism Committee will open a criminal investigation into the claims of instigating an armed uprising.