Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on Monday night, two days after a failed armed uprising by the head of the paramilitary group Wagner.
“Any blackmail (…) is doomed to failure,” he began, and also offered the fighters of the paramilitary group to join the army or to travel to Belarus.
He also thanked the Russians for their “patriotism” during the weekend’s events.
- Listen to Jean-François Baril’s interview with Lt. Col. Rémi Landry, now retired from the armed forces and Associate Professor at Sherbrooke University QUB radio :
Vladimir Putin also claimed that during the failed uprising he gave orders to the Wagner group to “avoid bloodshed,” which he said Ukraine and the West wanted.
“From the very beginning of events, on my direct orders, measures were taken to prevent major bloodshed,” Mr Putin said in a televised address, judging that the West and Ukraine wanted “such a fratricidal result.”