(Reuters) -The Wagner mercenary group is completing its handover of weapons to Russia’s regular armed forces, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday, more than two weeks after the group staged a brief armed mutiny.
The ministry said Wagner had handed over more than 2,000 pieces of equipment, including tanks and rockets, and more than 2,500 tonnes of ammunition.
The handover follows a deal with the Kremlin under which Wagner and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin called off their short-lived mutiny last month.
The Wagner fighters, who took part in some of the heaviest fighting of the war in Ukraine, were given the option of joining Prigozhin in exile in Belarus, joining Russia’s regular armed forces or going home.
During the June 23-24 mutiny, the mercenaries took control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and shot down an unspecified number of military helicopters, killing their pilots, as they advanced towards Moscow.
Prigozhin said his men’s actions were intended as a protest against what he called the corruption and incompetence of Russia’s military leadership in its handling of the Ukraine war.
The mutiny is widely perceived as having posed the most serious challenge to President Vladimir Putin since he assumed Russia’s presidency on the last day of 1999. It was defused in a deal brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Under that deal, which the Kremlin said was struck to avert bloodshed, a criminal case against Prigozhin and his fighters was dropped.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)
