'We paid Wagner over $1 billion last year', says President Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said that the government had paid the Wagner Group over $1 billion.

His comments came after the Russian mercenary group staged a failed coup against the country’s military.

“The state paid to the Wagner group 86.262 billion rubles (around $1 billion) for salaries for fighters and incentive rewards between May 2022 and May 2023 alone,” Putin said.

Russia once denied the very existence of Wagner, a shadowy mercenary army that defends Moscow’s interests with operations in several African and Middle Eastern states.

Putin added, “The content of the entire Wagner group was fully provided by the state, from the Ministry of Defence, from the state budget. We fully funded this group.”

Russia’s RIA state news agency reported that authorities had dropped all charges against the Wagner group as “the participants had ceased actions directly aimed at committing the crime.”

On Saturday, Prigozhin and Russian authorities struck a deal to defuse the three-day-long fiasco. Under this deal, the Kremlin said fighters who participated in the mutiny would not be prosecuted.

Meanwhile, the Wagner boss said that he will visit Belarus at the invitation of President Alexander Lukashenko. However, details of his proposed journey into exile were not made public and his whereabouts remained unconfirmed for three days.

Without taking Prigozhin’s name, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an address on Monday that those who participated in the mutiny had betrayed their motherland. Putin said Wagner fighters would be permitted to establish themselves in Belarus, join the Russian military or go home.

With inputs from agencies

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