Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to retaliate against the leaders of the Wagner Group insurrection on Monday in his first address to the nation after the attempted coup.
“The organizers of this insurrection must understand that they’ll be brought to trial,” Putin indignantly, two days after the Kremlin said it might allow Wagner insurgent commander Yevgeny Prigozhin to avoid criminal charges and escape to Belarus in exchange for stopping the insurrection.
“Everyone understands that it is a criminal activity,” said the furious Russian dictator.
Prigozhin’s march together with his mercenary troops to Moscow on Saturday was a “colossal threat” to the country and betrayed the mercenary group’s mission to help fight Ukraine, Putin said.
However the president, who seemed to sympathize with Wagner’s mutterings, assured low-level members that the Kremlin’s offer to join the Ministry of Defense still stands.
Otherwise, he claimed, they might return home and put down their weapons or seek refuge in neighboring, allied Belarus.
“This promise will be fulfilled,” the president said. “I repeat, it’s each of you’s selection.
![Vladimir Putin, in a televised speech on Monday, vowed to bring in the leaders of the Wagner rebellion.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013250309.jpg?w=1024)
“The organizers of this insurrection betrayed the individuals who were drawn into this organization.”
But Putin said that the identical offer wouldn’t be made to his leadership and that the Kremlin would be pondering “about those individuals who actually decided to take this step, which might have tragic and devastating consequences for the country, for Russia as an entire.”
He praised the Russian people for “solidarity, which shows that any blackmail is doomed to failure.”
He said the rebellion was what “Kiev and the West wanted – they wanted Russian soldiers to kill one another.”
![Putin's comments spell trouble for Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who turned back his troops after allegedly securing immunity for the rebellion at the cost of exile.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013241875-2.jpg?w=1024)
Putin’s message seemed to be a death knell for the particularly ruthless Wagner Group, but at the identical time he thanked the mercenary leaders for refraining from reaching Moscow and inciting violence.
“I would love to thank those commanders and soldiers of the Wagner Group who made the correct decision to stop and switch around and forestall bloodshed,” he said.
But even before Putin’s speech, experts concluded that Prigozhin was already a “walking corpse.”
Ian Bremmer, president of geopolitical risk firm Eurasia Group, said it was clear that Prigozhin would be executed for the coup attempt.
![Putin repeated the Kremlin's offer that Wagner's mercenaries leave the company and work for the Ministry of Defense.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013199071-2.jpg?w=1024)
“Putin imprisoned and murdered people for much lower than what Prigozhin did to him,” Bremmer told CNBC. Squawk Box Asia. “It’s inconceivable to me that Putin would let him live longer than absolutely crucial.”
Bremmer called Prigozhin a “walking dead man,” as former Russian army commander and intelligence officer Igor Girkin added in Telegram: “I do not think all Wagner commanders and fighters deserve to be shot.
“But hanging ‘the cook’ for insurrection and the murder of our officers is solely crucial for the preservation of Russia as a state,” he wrote, referring to Prigozhin’s nickname as “Putin’s cook” in reference to the lucrative government catering contracts he won.