Earlier, military convoys believed to belong to Prigozhin’s Wagner forces were seen in the town of Elets moving north along a highway towards the capital Moscow.
“Now the moment has come when blood can be shed,” he said. “Therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be shed from one side, we will turn our convoys around and go in the opposite direction to our field camps.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin had mobilized Russian troops on Saturday to put down what he called an armed rebellion by Prigozhin’s Wagner forces, whose fighters had claimed control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Prigozhin has accused Russia’s top military brass of ordering a rocket attack on Wagner’s field camps in Ukraine, where “huge numbers” of his fighters had been killed.
Prigozhin’s decision to halt the march towards Moscow came after negotiations with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko aimed at deescalating the situation.
The terms appeared to include an amnesty for Wagner forces who had taken part in the armed mutiny against Russia.
“The negotiations lasted throughout the day,” Lukashenko’s press pool reported. “As a result, we came to an agreement on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the territory of Russia.”
Wagner forces had been heading north in a convoy of trucks, tanks and infantry armored vehicles, which they hoped would have reached Moscow before being intercepted by the Russian army.
MNA/PR