LONDON (Reuters) – British foreign minister James Cleverly said on Monday the aborted mutiny by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, represented an unprecedented challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Armed Russian mercenaries withdrew from the southern Russian city of Rostov under a deal that halted their rapid advance on Moscow on Sunday.
“Prigozhin’s rebellion is an unprecedented challenge to President Putin’s authority and it is clear cracks are emerging in Russian support for the war,” Cleverly told parliament.
The extraordinary events over the weekend left governments, both friendly and hostile to Russia, looking for answers to what could happen next in the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
“The (British) government, of course, considers this an internal Russian affair. And of course, the leadership of Russia is a matter exclusively for the Russian people,” Cleverly said.
“I, of course, hold no candle for Prigozhin or his forces. They have committed atrocities in Ukraine and elsewhere,” Cleverly said.
“But he (Prigozhin) has said out loud what we have believed since the start of Russia’s full scale invasion: that this invasion was both unjustified and unprovoked.”
(Reporting by Muvija M and Andrew MacAskill, editing by William James)
