BELGRADE, June 26. /TASS/. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Sunday praised his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for preventing the attempted mutiny in Russia from taking a turn for the worse.
"Putin stopped it yesterday with his personal address and his adamant and strong-willed position," Vucic said in an interview with Pink television. "No one else alive today would have been able to stop it."
The Serbian president said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko made a serious contribution to resolving the situation but Putin was the one to take credit for its ultimate resolution.
"Everything ended thanks to strong reaction from President Putin. It was very resolute, clear and spot on," Vucic said.
On the evening of June 23, several audio messages were posted to the Telegram channel of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private military company Wagner, where he alleged that his units had been attacked, putting the blame for that on the country’s military leadership. The Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, started a criminal investigation into a call for an armed rebellion, while the Defense Ministry said the statement about the strike on the military company was false.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the nation on Saturday, describing the PMC Wagner’s actions as treason and vowing harsh retribution.
Later on Saturday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, in coordination with Putin, held talks with Prigozhin, which resulted in a plan for deescalation. Prigozhin announced that PMC Wagner was turning back its troops that were marching on Moscow to move them to their field camps. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped, and the PMC Wagner founder would leave for Belarus. Peskov said the Russian government would not to prosecute the mutinous PMC Wagner members, given their combat merits.