Russian president Vladimir Putin met Yevgeny Prigozhin and other Wagner commanders a few days after their aborted mutiny, the Kremlin revealed on Monday.
Dmitry Peskov, the president’s spokesperson, said Putin invited at least 35 people, including Prigozhin and the battalion commanders from the private military group, to the Kremlin on June 29. The meeting lasted nearly three hours.
The revelation is another stunning turn in the Kremlin’s handling of Prigozhin and his Wagner group after their failed revolt on June 23-24. While Putin had initially branded the warlord “a traitor”, he later dropped all charges and allowed him to leave Russia for Belarus in a deal brokered by the country’s president Alexander Lukashenko.