JABAR EKSPRES – Russian President Vladimir Putin said the leader of the Wagner mercenary group received about $2 billion from the state over the past year.
Speaking with soldiers at a meeting in the Kremlin on Tuesday (27/6), Putin said Wagner was financed through the Russian Defense Ministry, which transferred about 86 billion rubles in May 2022-May 2023 for mercenary salaries.
At the same time, Wagner’s head Yevgeny Prigozhin earned more than 80 billion rubles through his company Concord, which received the state order.
“I hope that in this work (the implementation of the state order) no one steals, or let’s say, does not steal much, but of course we will check everything,” Putin said.
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He also noted that “opponents” tried to capitalize on the attempted uprising, but failed-without mentioning who he was talking about,
On June 24, 2023, Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of attacking his fighters.
The accusation was followed by Wagner’s founding statement about a “Convoy of Justice” by mercenaries crossing the Ukrainian border into the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
Prigozhin said his members would move to Moscow, prompting the Kremlin, as the Russian government is known, to tighten security across the country.
Later, Prigozhin and his soldiers decided to turn back to avoid bloodshed when they were already 200 kilometers from Moscow.
The Federal Security Service called the actions of Wagner’s group an “armed rebellion” and opened a criminal case against Prigozhin, while Putin called the uprising of the private paramilitary company “treason”.
