Vladimir Putin held a secret meeting with Yevgeny Prigozhin five days after the Wagner leader’s failed mutiny, despite promising to punish him for the rebellion.
The June 29 talks in the Kremlin lasted three hours and involved nearly three dozen people, including unit commanders Prigozhin and Wagner.
The Kremlin said Putin called the meeting to hear firsthand why the group had rebelled five days earlier.
“Putin listened to the explanations of the [Wagner] commanders and offered them other employment and combat options,” said Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Aviation tracking data from Flightradar24 showed Prigozhin’s private jet flew into an airport near Moscow from St Petersburg on June 29. He returned to Saint Petersburg the next day.
Putin, meanwhile, had an unusually light public schedule on the day of the meeting. His only official engagement was a speech at a strategic forum in the Russian capital.
Extraordinary interviews
The extraordinary talks add another twist to the uprising that has rocked the Kremlin, marking the most serious threat to Putin’s nearly quarter-century rule.
Putin had threatened to ‘severely’ punish Wagner’s leaders when the rebellion broke out and later accused the mutiny organizers of ‘betraying their country and their people’.
The 24-hour revolt saw Prigozhin’s forces advance virtually unopposed from the southern city of Rostov-on-Don to less than 125 miles from Moscow before he called it off under a deal brokered by the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Putin agreed to allow the Wagner founder and his men to relocate to Belarus and to drop criminal charges of armed mutiny against them as part of the arrangement.
Mr Peskov said Prigozhin and his commanders apologized to Putin at last month’s meeting and insisted the target of their rebellion was the Russian Defense Ministry.
Prigozhin had regularly accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a key Putin ally, and General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff, of incompetence in his handling of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
“They stressed that they were staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and also said that they were ready to continue fighting for the fatherland,” said Mr Peskov. .
Peskov’s confirmation of the meeting came after French newspaper Liberation reported that Putin and Prigozhin had in-person talks on July 1, citing an unnamed Western intelligence source.
The meeting was also attended by the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, and the head of the Russian foreign intelligence agency, Sergey Naryshkin, according to Liberation.
Analysts said the decision to meet with Prigozhin signaled Putin could still be dependent on Wagner’s chief despite recent turmoil.
Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in which Wagner’s mercenaries were heavily involved, has continued to falter in recent weeks and Russia’s president appears increasingly isolated after the June 24 rebellion.
The Russian military’s apparent inaction to stop the Prigozhin uprising has raised questions about whether Putin can count on the loyalty of his security forces.
Putin has already promised to bolster the National Guard, which reports directly to him, and may also want to secure the loyalty of Wagner’s seasoned fighters.
Russian officials have made only a half-hearted effort to shut down Wagner since his rebellion, pressuring his fighters to sign military contracts or move to Belarus and remove roadside advertising, though its recruiting systems are still working.
Lukashenko said last week that Prigozhin was back in Russia and Wagner’s fighters had yet to accept the offer to move to Belarus, raising questions about the implementation of the deal.
Konstantin Sonin, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, said Putin’s apparent rapprochement with his former ally showed him to be a “dysfunctional autocrat”.
He also said the re-emergence for the first time since the rebellion of the much-hated General Gerasimov in a Monday morning video made the Russian leader a “struggling dictator who cannot fire his incompetent subordinates”.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month, then get a year for just $9 with our exclusive US offer.