It’s now six weeks since Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny of his mercenaries against the Kremlin – only to call it off barely 24 hours later.
He was supposedly exiled to Belarus, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks, he’s been back into Russia since then.
CNN has interviewed Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrey Kelin, this evening about what happened.
He was asked why the man who militarily took on the Kremlin is walking free, while critics like Andrei Navalny could spend decades behind bars.
“The investigation is going on,” Mr Kelin says.
“What happened when [his] troops when to Rostov? No-one has been killed at all. There was no damage at all. In my understanding, as one soldier described it, he is too outstanding.”
He adds: “There was no attempt to get Putin. […] Prizoghin’s people and Wagner were supposed to go under the control of the ministry of defence, getting the same salaries and same ammunitions [as Russian soldiers].
“They didn’t want that, because their profits when they were independent were higher than what was proposed to them.”
When pressed with the claim that 15 Russian soldiers died during the uprising, Mr Kelin responds: “That is not my understanding.”
He’s then asked why Prigozhin was allowed back to St Petersburg to meet African leaders at a summit last week, as a photo from the event attests.
“I saw that photograph and it does not prove anything,” he says. “Perhaps they have business relations or something like that. I have no explanation for that.”
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