MOSCOW: The rebel Wagner mercenary force threatened to march on Moscow on Saturday before announcing a stunning pullback, as Kyiv seized on the chaos to launch new assaults against Russian positions in Ukraine.

Before Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s apparent climbdown, Russian regular forces had launched what one regional governor called a “counter-terrorist operation” to halt the Wagner advance northwards up a main highway towards Moscow.

The private army captured a key military headquarters in southern Russia, and sent a force north to threaten the capital, defying Vladimir Putin’s warning of civil war.

In the capital, the mayor urged Muscovites to stay indoors and declared Monday a day off work.

Prigozhin said his troops had taken control of the military command centre and airbase in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the nerve centre of Russia’s offensive in Ukraine.

“We got to Rostov. Without a single shot we captured the HQ building,” he said, claiming that local civilians had welcomed the operation and vowing to overthrow Russia’s military command.

Responding to the challenge in a televised address, Putin accused Prigozhin — whose private army provided shock troops for Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine — of a “stab in the back” that posed a threat to Russia’s very survival.

Kyiv revelled in the chaos, as Putin’s former mercenary ally turned his Wagner force away from the offensive against Ukraine and made to topple the chiefs of Russia’s military.

But amid Russia’s most serious security crisis in decades, Prigozhin delivered a surprise announcement, saying his troops were turning back to avoid bloodshed in the Russian capital.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said he had negotiated a truce with Prigozhin “on stopping the movement of armed individuals from the Wagner group on Russian territory and further steps on deescalating tensions.”

“We are turning our columns around and going back to field camps,” Prigozhin announced.

Hours later, the Kremlin said Prigozhin would leave for Belarus and a criminal case against him would be dropped. Those who had joined the “armed rebellion” would not be prosecuted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2023