MOSCOW, June 26. /TASS/. US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy signaled to Russian officials that Washington has nothing to do with the mutiny and hopes that nuclear weapons are safe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
"By the way, when US Ambassador Tracy spoke with Russian officials yesterday, she sent some signals. These signals are probably not secret; they were primarily that the US had nothing to do with this, that the US is very hopeful that nuclear weapons will be okay, that American diplomats will not be harmed," he said in an interview with the RT TV channel.
According to Lavrov, Tracy also reiterated in the conversation that the mutiny situation was Russia’s domestic affair. "It was emphasized that the US proceeds from the fact that everything that is happening is the domestic affair of the Russian Federation," the top diplomat pointed out.
Lavrov stressed that there have been a number of attempted uprisings over the years in different countries, and the US has reacted differently each time depending on who was in power and who was trying to carry out the coup. In particular, the top Russian diplomat cited the 2014 coup in Kiev as an example. "Bloody provocations against unarmed law enforcement officers, a coup d'etat against a legitimate president, right when a few hours before this coup d'etat a settlement agreement was reached, supported by the EU. The US and its European allies did not protest against this coup," Lavrov added.
At the same time, the foreign minister recalled that the West called the situation when thousands of people in Moldova peacefully protested against the policies of the country’s president Maia Sandu a coup d'etat attempt. "By definition, there can be no protests where the West is interested in maintaining the incumbent authorities, and where the authorities reflect not the interests of one hegemon, but try to take into account the national interests of their country and their people, all sorts of spies egg on the authorities. These are American rules, this is the American way of the world, as they want to see it and want to strengthen it," the top Russian diplomat pointed out.
June 24 mutiny
On the evening of June 23, several audio recordings were posted on Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Telegram channel. In one in particular, he claimed that his units had come under attack, for which he blamed Russia’s military authorities. The Federal Security Service (FSB) launched a criminal probe into calls for armed mutiny. The Russian Defense Ministry slammed the allegations of a strike on the PMC Wagner's "rear camps" as false. The PMC units that supported Prigozhin headed to Rostov-on-Don and toward Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address to the nation on Saturday, described the Wagner group’s actions as armed mutiny and betrayal, vowing to take tough measures against the mutineers.
Later on Saturday, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, in coordination with Putin, held talks with Prigozhin resulting in the PMC turning its units around and returning to field camps. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a criminal case against the Wagner chief would be dropped, while Prigozhin himself would go to Belarus. Besides, the Russian authorities pledged not to prosecute those at PMC Wagner who took part in the mutiny because of their "frontline merits.".