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After making threats to destroy the government the previous day, soldiers from the formidable mercenary outfit Wagner mercenary group today left Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.
Governor Vasily Golubev posted on Telegram that “a Wagner column left Rostov and headed to their field camps.” The city’s most important military base had been taken over by the mercenaries on Saturday.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner, and the Russian army have been at odds for some time. On Saturday, their conflict reached a deadly conclusion when his soldiers overran a crucial army headquarters in southern Russia and moved up north to threaten the capital.
The Russian government said that the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, which had been advancing on Moscow, would leave to Belarus and not be put on trial, ending the nation’s worst security crisis in decades.
In pictures posted by the Wagner organisation on Telegram, a sizable throng could be seen cheering as the Wagner soldiers drove out of town in tanks and armoured cars.
Outside the military command centre Wagner had seized, dozens were clapping and yelling “Wagner! Wagner!”
People even waited up to get their photo taken with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner.
The dramatic events came at the end of a day that saw Prigozhin lead convoys of his fighters to within hours of the capital almost unopposed, despite President Vladimir Putin accusing the mercenary organisation of “treason” in a national TV address.
By shockingly declaring that his forces were “turning our columns around and going back to field camps” in order to prevent carnage in the Russian capital, Prigozhin abruptly turned the tide that evening.
