Russian state TV has launched a fierce attack on Yevgeny Prigozhin, the exiled boss of the Wagner mercenary force, saying that an investigation into the private army’s short-lived mutiny against the Moscow military leadership was still under way.
In a programme called 60 Minutes broadcast on Wednesday on Russia’s state Russia-1 TV channel, the Wagner boss was branded a “traitor” and viewers were told that the criminal case against Prigozhin was in full swing.
Prigozhin’s Wagner force crossed from Ukraine into Russia on June 24 and took control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don as a unit of his fighters sped towards Moscow in an attempt to remove key Russian military officials.
But the Wagner convoy stopped within 200km (124 miles) of Moscow, and to the surprise of many, Prigozhin said he had called off his operation after agreeing to lead his forces into Belarus after a deal was struck with the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko, and in order to not spill Russian blood.
Under the deal, all criminal charges against Prigozhin and the Wagner fighters who participated in the mutiny were to be dropped.
Post from www.aljazeera.com