Putin to make ‘important statements’Good evening, I’m Sammy Gecsoyler and I’ll be covering the latest developments.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is due to make a number of “important” statements shortly, Russian media reported, citing the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
The purported address comes after Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin reappeared for the first time since abandoning his armed mutiny on Saturday evening, issuing a defiant 11-minute statement in which he defended the Wagner uprising and said that “society demanded it”.
In the statement, Prigozhin denied that Wagner sought to topple Putin and said that the uprising had shown that there were “serious problems with security on the whole territory of our country”. “It was not our goal to overthrow the regime,” Prigozhin said in the voice memo, which was uploaded to his Concord Group’s Telegram page.