By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 3 hours ago, updated 17 minutes ago
“data-script=”https://static.lefigaro.fr/widget-video/short-ttl/video/index.js” >
The US President said he did not know where militia leader Wagner was at the moment and “what contacts” he had.
US President Joe Biden on Thursday joked about the risk of the elimination of the leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner Evgeny Prigoyine after his aborted mutiny against Moscow and said he should “watch what he eats”. “God only knows what he will do. I’m not even sure where he is or what contacts he has. If I were him, I would watch what I eat. I would look at the menu,” he said at a press conference in Helsinki.
Where did Prigoyine go?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said July 10 that Vladimir Putin met with the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner on June 29. The meeting lasted “almost three hours,” Dmitry Peskov said, adding that 35 people attended, including “all the commanders and leaders” of the Wagner organization. “The President gave his assessment of Wagner’s activities” on the Ukrainian front, he added, as well as “his assessment of the events of June 24,” the date of the group’s uprising.
Vladimir Putin had “listened to the statements of the commanders (by Wagner) and offered them alternative (solutions) for their future work and use for military purposes,” the spokesman for the Russian president had assured. “The commanders (von Wagner) presented their version of the facts. They emphasized that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief (Vladimir Putin) and reiterated that they are ready to continue fighting for the Fatherland,” he said. The Kremlin was responding to an article published on Friday by the French daily Liberation, which said, based on Western intelligence sources, that Yevgeny Prigoyine was being held in the Kremlin, where he had been summoned along with his commanders in chief.
Also read Wagner: The Mad Expedition of the Rebels by Yevgueni Prigojine
Wagner’s uprising shook Russian power amid conflict in Ukraine. For several hours, the fighters of this group occupied a headquarters of the Russian army in Rostov-on-Don (south-west) and traveled several hundred kilometers towards Moscow. The mutiny ended on the evening of June 24 with an agreement that provided for Yevgeny Prigoyine to leave for Belarus. However, the exact whereabouts of the latter have remained unknown ever since. He has not spoken publicly since June 26.
“data-script=”https://static.lefigaro.fr/widget-video/short-ttl/video/index.js” >