#Title

Working as normal despite mutiny

Says Wagner HQ; Lavrov says Russia is checking if Western spy agencies were involved in mutiny
AGENCIES
The headquarters of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny over the weekend that rattled President Vladimir Putin’s rule, said yesterday it was working in “normal mode.”
The statement from the office came as the fate of Wagner was uncertain after the rebellion and as Russia appeared to take a business-as-usual approach.
“Despite events that have taken place, the centre continues to work in normal mode in accordance to the law of the Russian Federation,” the office, based in Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, said.
It said Wagner has “worked for the future of Russia” and thanked its supporters, reports AFP.
Wagner’s chief Prigozhin has not been seen since Saturday, but the Kremlin said he will be sent to neighbouring Belarus after a Minsk-brokered deal to halt his rebellion.
Russia’s intelligence services are investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny by armed Wagner mercenary fighters on Saturday, the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying yesterday.
The group will continue operations in Mali and the Central African Republic, Lavrov said.
Wagner members “are working there as instructors. This work, of course, will continue,” Lavrov said in an interview with RT, adding that the revolt would not affect Russia’s ties with “partners and friends”.
Lavrov said Europe and France in particular had “abandoned” the two African countries, which had in turn asked Russia and Wagner to provide military instructors and “to ensure the security of their leaders”.
Western powers believe the Wagner group is used to promote Russia’s influence abroad and have accused the group of torture and exploiting natural resources.
Wagner, whose very existence Moscow denied until its Ukraine offensive, said it had “created opportunities for the (self) realisation of talented people from all over the country”.
It said that on top of developing “domestic drones”, it had also worked on “preparing information fighters and countering the information war”.
Prigozhin is known to have led an infamous troll farm in Saint Petersburg.
Despite Putin calling the Wagner mutiny “treason” and warning of civil war, some of the group’s offices around Russia were still recruiting fighters, Russian media reported.
The TASS state news agency said Wagner recruitment reopened in Siberia’s Novosibirsk and Tyumen.
“Recruitment is ongoing,” TASS quoted a Wagner worker in Novosibirsk as saying.
In the Duma -- Russia’s lower house of parliament -- however, lawmakers said the group could no longer recruit convicts.
Prigozhin had recruited thousands of Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine, promising an amnesty upon their return if they survive.
“There was a time when (Wagner) could take those who were convicted and sign a contract with them,” senior lawmaker Pavel Krasheninnikov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
“Now the law says there is a different procedure, under which contracts can only be signed with the defence ministry.”
Mikhail Mishustin, who leads Putin’s cabinet as his appointed prime minister, acknowledged yesterday that Russia had faced “a challenge to its stability”, and called for public loyalty, reports Reuters.
“We need to act together, as one team, and maintain the unity of all forces, rallying around the president,” he told a televised government meeting.
Russia’s national Anti-Terrorism Committee said the situation in the country was stable. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who had told residents to stay indoors on Saturday as the mutinous fighters raced to within a few hundred kilometres of the capital, said he was cancelling a counter-terrorism security regime.