Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has held talks with Wagner mercenary group head Yevgeny Prigozhin during which Prigozhin agreed to stop his troops and “de-escalate the situation”, Rossiya 24 news channel said.
“Prigozhin accepted Lukashenko’s proposal to stop the movement of Wagner in Russian territory and on further steps to de-escalate tension,” Rossiya 24 said, quoting Lukashenko’s press service.
It also said it was proving “possible to find an acceptable variant of de-escalating [the situation] with security guarantees for Wagner PMC’s fighters”.
Rossiya 24 said the conversation had been agreed with Putin.
The Wagner mercenary leader has already put out a voice note on his Telegram channel saying he has has agreed to “stop” the movement of his troops who are advancing on the Russian capital.
According to Prigozhin: “They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.”
Sources said the convoy heading for Moscow was made up by up to 400 vehicles and that the insurgent forces were at Yelets, Lipetsk Oblast, and only 320km away from Moscow.