Russian national flag waves at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 6, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua]
Moscow and Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner
private military group, reached a compromise through the mediation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko late Saturday, according to RIA Novosti news agency reports.
Prigozhin has accepted Lukashenko's proposal to stop the advance of the Wagner troops and de-escalate the situation, the reports said.
On Saturday morning, Putin informed his Belarusian counterpart of the situation in Russia regarding the Wagner group and the heads of state agreed on joint actions.
"The president of Belarus held talks with Yevgeny Prigozhin ... They came to an agreement on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the Russian territory," the press service of the Belarusian president was quoted as saying.
Then the Wagner fighters left southern Russia's Rostov region and were headed to their field camps, according to Russia's TASS news agency.
The criminal case against Prigozhin will be dropped, and he will go to Belarus, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on late Saturday, without specifying what exactly Prigozhin will do in the former Soviet republic.
Lukashenko has been personally acquainted with Prigozhin for about 20 years and "this was his personal proposal agreed with Putin, " Peskov said.
"There was a higher goal to avoid bloodshed, to avoid internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable results. It was for the sake of these goals that Lukashenko's mediation efforts were made, and President Putin made the appropriate decision," the spokesman said.
According to the official, the guarantee that Prigozhin will be able to leave for Belarus was the word of the Russian president.
The incident with the Wagner group will not affect the course of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, which will continue, he added.
