‘Armed mutiny’: Putin accuses mercenary group of treason

President Vladimir Putin has decried an armed rebellion by a private military group as a treasonous act of "betrayal" and vowed to defend Russia.

Russian militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his fighters have taken control of military facilities in a strategically critical Russian city and demanded that top military officials meet him in a stunning escalation of his feud with Moscow's security establishment over their handling of the war in Ukraine.

In an address to the nation, Putin urged the forces to return to their posts in Ukraine, describing the march to Rostov-on-Don as "high-treason" and "a knife in the back of our people".

Putin appealed to Wagner forces and vowed to defend Russia.

"I appeal to those pushed into the provocation of a military rebellion," he said.

Putin added that at this time, "we require unity, consolidation, and responsibility."

"Those who carry deliberately on a path of treason, preparing an armed rebellion when you were preparing terrorist attacks, will be punished," Putin said.

The Russian President said, "any internal turmoil is a deadly threat to our statehood for us as a nation; it is a blow to Russia for our people and our actions to protect our homeland. Such a threat will face a severe response."

Prigozhin, who heads private military group Wagner, pledged to blockade the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and move on to Moscow if Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia's top general Valery Gerasimov did not meet with him in the city, where Russia's Southern Military District is headquartered.

The militia chief's actions come after he accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing "a huge amount" of his fighters, and announced, in a series of Telegram messages Friday and Saturday, that his forces were moving into Rostov region, neighbouring Russian-occupied Ukraine, ready to "destroy everything" in their way.

Russia's Ministry of Defense denied Prigozhin's claims of an attack on a Wagner camp, calling it an "informational provocation."

The Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's domestic intelligence service, has responded to Prigozhin on Friday, urging Wagner fighters to detain their leader and opening a criminal case against the Prigozhin.

Prigozhin, who has frequently criticized Russia's traditional military hierarchy, warned in his messages that retribution would be meted out for the alleged attack on his fighters.

"We will deal with those who destroy Russian soldiers and return to the front, justice for the troops will be restored, and then justice for all of Russia," he said.

"There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It's the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle," he said, in a radical escalation of a longstanding feud with Russia's military leaders.

The Governor of Voronezh oblast, which lies to the north of Rostov said Saturday that "a convoy of military equipment" was on its way south.

Security measures were stepped up in Moscow Friday night. Russian intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, posted a video about Prigozhin's actions that day, describing it as a coup attempt.

"Only the president has the right to appoint the top leadership of the armed forces, and you are trying to encroach on his authority. This is a coup d'etat. There is no need to do this now, because there is no greater damage to the image of Russia and to its armed forces," he added.

Prigozhin said that his criticism of the Russian military leadership was a "march of justice" and not a coup. "This is not a military coup, this is a march of justice. Our actions do not interfere with the troops in any way," Prigozhin said.

Wagner has played a prominent role in the Ukraine war, and Prigozhin, so far, has faced few consequences for his public feud with Russia's military leadership – where he has accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov of not giving his forces ammunition.

The FSB's criminal case against Prigozhin accused him of "calling for an armed rebellion" – a crime Russian prosecutors say is punishable by imprisonment for 12 to 20 years.

"We call on the PMC fighters not to make irreparable mistakes, to stop any forceful actions against the Russian people, not to carry out Prigozhin's criminal and treacherous orders, and to take measures to detain him," said the statement on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Putin is aware of the situation and "all necessary measures are being taken," according to state media RIA Novosti.

Russia on alert

As security measures stepped up in Moscow late on Friday, Prigozhin said his fighters entered Russia's Rostov region, near southeast Ukraine, and were given a hero's welcome.

"The border guards came out to meet and hugged our fighters," he said.

In the first suggestion of open armed conflict between the two sides, Prigozhin on Saturday said his units were hit by a helicopter on a highway. It's unclear exactly where the units were.

"The Wagner units are intact, the helicopter is destroyed and is burning in the forest," Prigozhin said, adding "we will take it as a threat and destroy everything around us."

Prigozhin also claimed a second helicopter was downed after it attacked civilians. He later said that Russian Guards and military police are supporting the Wagner group, saying 60-70 soldiers had already joined.

CNN has been unable to verify any of Prigozhin's claims.

Rostov region Governor Vasily Golubev asked residents to stay calm and not leave their homes in a Telegram post Saturday.

"Law enforcement agencies are doing everything necessary to ensure the safety of the region's residents," Golubev said.

Videos circulating on social media and geolocated to the city of Rostov-on-Don, the capital of the Rostov region, show military vehicles going through the streets and helicopters over the city Saturday morning. It is currently unclear whose command these vehicles are under the control of.

The Rostov region is about 1,000 kilometres from Moscow.

Security officials appeared to take no chances in the capital, according to Russian state media TASS. Social media posts showed military vehicles were seen driving around the main streets of the Russian capital in the early hours of Saturday.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Saturday on Telegram that "anti-terrorist" measures to strengthen security were being carried out in the capital as a result of "incoming information."

"Additional control on the roads has been introduced. Limitations on holding the public events are possible," he added.

Russia's top commander in Ukraine, Sergey Surovikin, urged Wagner mercenary fighters to "stop" and to "obey the will" of Putin in a Telegram video. "You can't play into the hands of the enemy in this difficult time for the country," he said.

Meanwhile, Russians watching State news TV channel Russia 24 had their evening programming interrupted with a message from the Russian Ministry of Defense saying Prigozhin's claims "do not correspond to reality and are intended to misinform."

The fiery exchanges sent a ripple through the Russian commentators, with many disagreeing as to whether the Wagner leader was calling for a coup.

But the fallout from his comments also inspired a wave of schadenfreude in Ukraine. "Classical Russian poetry… Tumultuous times are coming," wrote Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine's presidential office, wrote on Twitter.

Ukraine invaded under 'false pretenses'

Prigozhin and Wagner have played an unusual and informal role in Putin's Russia. He has known the president since the 1990s; both are from St. Petersburg. Prigozhin won valuable contracts as the Kremlin's caterer and later set up the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, whose mission was to interfere in the US 2016 election.

The Ukraine conflict raised Prigozhin's profile, but his comments on Friday could precipitate a fall from grace.

Earlier on Friday, Prigozhin furthered his ongoing dispute with military leaders in a highly critical video interview where he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian invasion or the so-called "special operation," he said, was not launched because of a threat to Russia from Ukraine or NATO despite what Moscow claims, he said in the interview posted on Telegram by Wagner's media arm.

He added that the situation in eastern Ukraine had not changed in eight years from the time Crimea was annexed, with both sides taking the occasional shot at each other, without any escalation, he said.

His comments challenge Russia's justification for the war, with President Putin having framed the invasion of Ukraine as a "special mission" to protect Russian speakers from genocide at the hands of "neo-Nazis."

Prigozhin has previously defended the reasoning for the war but has been critical of how it has been handled by the Minister of Defense, Shoigu – with whom he is directly fighting with over military contracts.

In the interview, he claimed the ministry misled Russian President Putin entirely. "Now the Ministry of Defense is trying to deceive the public, trying to deceive the President and tell the story that there was insane aggression on the part of Ukraine, and that they were going to attack us together with the NATO bloc. Therefore, the so-called special operation on February 24 was launched for completely different reasons," he said.

The Wagner chief also accused Shoigu of deceiving Putin about the status of the Ukrainian battlefield, claiming Russian troops are on the back foot in the south of Ukraine, and that the whole invasion was a "poorly planned operation."

Armed rebellion

Prigozhin posted a series of angry video and audio recordings in which he accused Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering a rocket strike on Wagner's field camps in Ukraine, where his troops are fighting on behalf of Russia.

Prigozhin said his troops would now punish Shoigu in an armed rebellion and urged the army not to offer resistance.

“This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin declared.

The security services reacted immediately by opening a criminal investigation into Prigozhin and calling for his arrest.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin says that "anti-terrorist measures" are being carried out in the city as a result of "incoming information," according to an update on his Telegram group.

"In connection with the incoming information, antiterrorist measures are being taken in Moscow aimed at strengthening security measures," Sobyanin said.

The measures include "additional control on the roads" and "limitations on holding public events."

The National Anti-Terrorism Committee, which is part of the Federal Security Services, or FSB, said he would be investigated on charges of calling for an armed rebellion.

The FSB urged Wagner's contract soldiers to arrest Prigozhin and refuse to follow his “criminal and treacherous orders.”

It called his statements a “stab in the back to Russian troops” and said they amounted to fomenting an armed conflict in Russia.

Prigozhin has often been with his troops near the frontline in Ukraine, but his whereabouts on Friday were unclear.

In a sign of how seriously the Kremlin was taking the threat, riot police and the National Guard have been scrambled to tighten security at key facilities in Moscow, including government agencies and transport infrastructure, the state news agency Tass reported.

Russia’s chief prosecutor said the criminal investigation was justified and that an armed rebellion charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years imprisonment.

President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the situation and “all the necessary measures were being taken, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Wagner's forces have played a crucial role in Russia's war in Ukraine, succeeding in taking the city where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place, Bakhmut.

Prigozhin has frequently criticised Russia's military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of weapons and ammunition, but his accusations and calls for armed rebellion Friday were more direct challenge.

The Russian Defence Ministry required all military contractors to sign contracts with it before July 1, but Prigozhin, whose feud with the Defence Ministry dates back years, refused to comply.

In a statement issued late Friday, he said he was ready to find a compromise with the Defence Ministry, but “they have treacherously cheated us.”

“Today they carried out a rocket strike on our rear camps, and a huge number of our comrades got killed,” he said. The Defence Ministry denied attacking the Wagner camps.

Prigozhin claimed that Shoigu went to the Russian military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don personally to direct the strike on Wagner and then “cowardly” fled.

“This scum will be stopped,” he said, in a reference to Shoigu.

“The evil embodied by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” he shouted, urging the army not to offer any resistance to Wagner as it moves to “restore justice.”

Security also was heightened in Rostov-on-Don, Tass reported. Its correspondent said military and law enforcement personnel were seen on the streets, with at least one armoured personnel carrier and aerial patrols.

Colonel General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of the Russian group of forces fighting in Ukraine, urged the Wagner forces to stop any move against the army, saying it would play into the hands of Russia's enemies, who are "waiting to see the exacerbation of our domestic political situation.”

Another top military officer, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, denounced Prigozhin’s move as “madness” and threatened to unleash a civil war in Russia.

“It’s a stab in the back to the country and the president,” he said.

“It’s impossible to imagine a stronger blow to the image of Russia and its armed forces. Such a provocation could only be staged by enemies of Russia.”

The Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement that the Ukrainian military was concentrating troops to launch an attack around Bakhmut to take advantage of “Prigozhin’s provocation.”

It said Russian artillery and warplanes were firing on Ukrainian forces as they prepared to start an offensive in the area.

In other developments in the Ukraine, war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on other countries to heed warnings that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant to cause a radiation disaster.

Members of his government briefed international representatives on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, whose six reactors have been shut down for months. Zelenskyy said he expected other nations to “give appropriate signals and exert pressure” on Moscow.

The Kremlin’s spokesman has denied the threat to the plant is coming from Russian forces.

The potential for a life-threatening release of radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station.

The head of the UN’s atomic energy agency spent months trying to negotiate the establishment of a safety perimeter to protect the facility as nearby areas came under repeated shelling, but he has been unsuccessful.

The International Atomic Energy Agency noted Thursday that “the military situation has become increasingly tense” while a Ukrainian counteroffensive that got underway this month unfolds in Zaporizhzhia province, where the namesake plant is located, and in an adjacent part of Donetsk province.

Although the last of the plant’s six reactors was shut down last fall to reduce the risk of a meltdown, experts have warned that a radiation release could still happen if the system that keeps the reactors’ cores and spent nuclear fuel cool loses power or water.

During months of fighting, Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over which side was increasing the threat to the plant.

On Friday, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi met with the head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom in the Kaliningrad exclave of Russia to discuss the conditions at the plant.

Rosatom director Alexey Likachev and other officials “emphasized that they now expect specific steps” from the UN agency to prevent Ukrainian attacks on the plant and its adjacent territory, said a statement from the Russian corporation, whose divisions build and operate nuclear power plants.

Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials accused Russia of mining the plant’s cooling system, already under threat from a dam collapse earlier this week that drew down water in a reservoir that the power station uses.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Friday that Russia has beefed up its defence forces in southern Ukraine in response to the early counteroffensive and intensified its efforts to take more ground in the east.

Asked if the Ukrainian military’s initial attacks set the stage for a larger assault, Maliar told Ukrainian television: “We are yet to see the main events, and the main blow. And indeed, a part of reserves will be used later.”

Ukrainian forces so far have made only incremental gains in Zaporizhzhia province, one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed last year.

Putin has pledged to defend the regions as Russian territory.

Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine is fighting to force Russian troops out of those regions, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 and is using as a staging and supply route in the 16-month-old war.

If the counteroffensive breaks the Russian defences in the south, Ukrainian forces could attempt to reach a pair of occupied port cities on the Sea of Azov and break Russia’s land bridge to Crimea.

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