Russia's Special Presidential Representative for International Cultural Cooperation and former Minister of Culture, Mikhail Shvydkoy on Monday said that the situation in Russia is "stable" and the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin is also intact after the Wagner mercenary group ar
"Amid the seriousness of the situation and the threat of escalation of confrontation in the Russian Federation the FSB has opened a criminal case into the fact of a call for an armed rebellion on the part of Yevgeny Prigozhin," it said.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S Peskov said Prigozhin will go to Belarus, and the fighters who rebelled with him would not be prosecuted by law given their "service at the front."
Putin's statement comes after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the alleged head of the Wagner mercenary group, in a series of recordings released on social media on Saturday, announced that his troops had taken control of military facilities in two Russian cities.
Russian Ministry of Defence noted that Russia has already provided such assistance to all the fighters and commanders who applied for it. It further said that it would "guarantee everyone's safety."