Putin survives Wagner revolt but forced to cut deal

MOSCOW, June 25 (AFP): The leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner has agreed to go into exile in Belarus, the Kremlin said, after President Vladimir Putin was forced to accept an amnesty deal to halt a mutiny.
The agreement appears to end the immediate threat that Yevgeny Prigozhin's private army could storm Moscow, but analysts said Wagner's revolt had exposed a fragility in Putin's rule.
Security measures imposed under an "anti-terrorism operation" were still in place in Moscow on Sunday, and Prigozhin's exact whereabouts were unclear, but his troops had left a military headquarters they had seized in southern Russia.
The long-standing feud between Prighozin and military top brass over the conduct of the Russian operation in Ukraine boiled over on Saturday when Wagner forces seized the base in Rostov-on-Don and embarked on a long advance towards Moscow.
Putin denounced the action as treason and vowed to punish the perpetrators, accusing them of pushing Russia to the brink of civil war-only to then accept a rapidly cobbled-together agreement to avert Russia's most serious security crisis in decades.
Within hours of Prigozhin's surprise announcement that his forces would return to base to avoid "spilling Russian blood", the Kremlin announced that Putin's former ally would leave for Belarus and that Russia would not prosecute him nor Wagner's troops.
By early Sunday, Wagner had pulled out of Rostov-on-Don, the regional governor said, but before they left dozens of residents were cheering and chanting "Wagner! Wagner!" outside the military headquarters they had captured.
Ukraine revelled in the chaos, stepping up its own counteroffensive against Russian forces in the country and mocking Putin's apparent humiliation.
Analysts also said that the deal had exposed weakness in the Russian president's grip on power.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said he had negotiated the truce with Prigozhin. Moscow thanked him, but observers noted that an intervention by Lukashenko, usually seen as Putin's very junior partner, was itself an embarrassment.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said the criminal case against Prigozhin will be dropped and he would go to Belarus, while members of Wagner who had taken part in what authorities dubbed an "armed rebellion" would not be prosecuted.