📷: Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves the headquarters of the Southern Military District amid the group's pullout from the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 24, 2023.
👉Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ordered his fighters Saturday to halt their advance on Moscow, turn their convoy around and return to their bases in Ukraine to avoid bloodshed.
The office of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced that Lukashenko had negotiated a deal with the Wagner Group chief, with the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that Prigozhin had agreed to de-escalate the situation.
In an audio message released by his press service, Prigozhin said: "They wanted to disband the Wagner military company. We embarked on a march of justice on June 23. In 24 hours, we got to within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of our fighters' blood.
"Now the moment has come when blood could be spilled. Understanding responsibility [for the chance] that Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our columns around and going back to field camps as planned,” he said in the audio message on his channel on the messaging app Telegram.
Source: Voice of America (VoA)
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