The events in Russia are an internal affair of Russia, Zbigniew Rau, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote on social media on Saturday. He also announced that he had had a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the events in Russia.
The head of the State Department said he had spoken with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the events in Russia.
We agreed that continued monitoring of the situation, unity and allied cooperation are critical. We have established that the events in Russia are an internal affair of Russia
he wrote on Twitter.
The owner of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Saturday evening that his troops, who had been moving towards Moscow since Friday, had begun to withdraw and were moving towards field camps to avoid bloodshed. Minsk authorities claim they are brokering talks about security guarantees for mercenaries.
In an audio statement, Prigozhin said that the Wagner group had reached a distance of 200 km from Moscow and during that time had “not shed a single drop of blood from its soldiers”. He added that “now is the time for this bloodshed to take place”, so “realizing the responsibility” for such a situation, the mercenaries begin to retreat.
We’re going back to the field camps
said Prigozhin.
Shortly before, Alyaksandr Lukashenko’s office reported that he had spoken with Prigozhin and agreed to stop the mercenary column on its way to Moscow. Lukashenko conducted these talks in consultation with Vladimir Putin, Minsk said. According to Reuters, Lukashenko’s law firm claims he brokered an agreement to halt the advance of the Wagner Group in exchange for security guarantees.
Reports of the withdrawal of the Wagner Group came at a time when, according to various reports, troops of about 5,000 people were located in different regions of Russia. Information appeared, difficult to verify, about the presence of mercenaries already in the Moscow region – in Serpukhov and Kaszyr.
In response to the mercenary advance, all crossings across the Oka in the Moscow region were blocked. Reserve units of soldiers sent from other regions of Russia arrived in Moscow on Saturday night, according to the independent portal Vazhnye Istoria.
gah/PAP
Source: wPolityce