Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin says he ordered his mercenaries to halt their march on Moscow to avoid “shedding Russian blood”.
Prigozhin said while his men are just 200km (120 miles) from Moscow, he decided on Saturday to turn them back to prevent killings.
“We are turning our columns around and going back to field camps,” he said.
The comments by Prigozhin in an audio message came after Belarus’ leader Alexander Lukashenko said he negotiated with the mercenary boss to stop Wagner’s troop movement.
He accepted Lukashenko’s offer to halt the Wagner group’s advance and further steps to de-escalate the tensions, Lukashenko’s office said, adding the proposed settlement contains security guarantees for Wagner troops. It did not elaborate.
Prigozhin did not say whether the Kremlin responded to his demand to oust Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.
President Vladimir Putin faced the biggest threat to his rule yet with rebel mercenaries advancing towards the Russian capital after seizing a key military base.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian defence analyst, said it remains to be seen how the incident plays out.
“What’s really going to happen, we’ll have to see tomorrow. And who actually did give which concessions to whom,” he told Al Jazeera. “Ceasefires don’t hold that easily. Before you see the small print, it’s not the time to say that it’s over. It can easily unravel in an hour or two, or tomorrow.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday the revolt by Wagner troops exposed complete chaos in the country.
“Today the world can see that the masters of Russia control nothing. And that means nothing. Simply complete chaos. An absence of any predictability,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
Addressing Putin while switching from Ukrainian into Russian language, Zelenskyy said: “The longer your troops remain on Ukrainian land, the greater the devastation they will bring to Russia.”
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