Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, a private army of mercenaries late on Saturday ordered his fighters to halt their advance to Moscow, Russia’s capital.
The Wagner mercenaries have reportedly left the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, less than 24 hours after seizing it.
Earlier, Prigozhin said he had told his fighters to return to Ukraine to avoid bloodshed.
According to Russian state media reports, Prigozhin will now move to neighbouring Belarus and charges against him and his troops will be dropped. This followed a deal brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
Wagner troops took control of the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov on Saturday morning after crossing the border from Ukraine where they have been fighting alongside the Russian army.
They then began to advance towards Moscow in a move President Vladimir Putin described as a betrayal and an act of treason.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation in Russia as “complete chaos”. He said in a statement:
The man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself. I am sure that he is no longer in Moscow.
He knows what he is afraid of because he himself created this threat. All evil, all losses, all hatred – it is he who spreads it.
BBC News reported that there were rumours that Putin had fled Moscow after flight tracking showed that two presidential planes had left Moscow on Saturday.
However, his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said the president was still in the Kremlin.
Peskov also said the arrest warrant for Prigozhin would be dropped and the criminal case against him and his troops would be closed.
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