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So, what happened in Russia last weekend? On the night of June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin, ex-convict turned businessman and – most importantly – leader of the private militia Wagner Group, led his 20,000 to 25,000 men in a rebellion that quickly raised the spectre of civil war in Russia. For weeks already, Prigozhin had been accusing the Russian General Staff of undermining the work of his soldiers. even deliberately targeting and killing them, and dismissing the official reasons for Russia’s "special military operation" in Ukraine.
As Vladimir Putin took to the screens and airwaves to condemn the rebellion, announcing sanctions against the "traitors", Wagner seized military sites in the city of Rostov-on-Don before slowly moving towards Moscow, raising fears of an attack on the capital. However, the insurrection turned out to be short-lived: late on Saturday afternoon, Prigozhin announced the withdrawal of his troops and the end of their mutiny, following mediation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The content of these negotiations was not revealed, nor was the reasoning of “Putin's chef” Prigozhin.
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