Key Points
- Wagner Group troops have turned back from their "march for justice" on Moscow.
- The mercenaries' boss Yevgeny Prigozhin will move to Belarus as part of a deal with Russian authorities.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Wagner revolt exposed "chaos" in Russia.
The greatest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power has fizzled out relatively peacefully.
On Saturday, the rebellious mercenary commander who ordered his troops to march on Moscow abruptly reached a deal with the Kremlin to go into exile and sounded the retreat.
The dramatic, if brief, revolt shifted the landscape for the Kremlin and the 16-month-old war in Ukraine and prompted Russia to pull soldiers back from the battlefield to defend the capital, a stunning recognition of the threat posed by Wagner Group soldiers under the command of .
Since then, Russia's defence minister has been shown discussing the war in Ukraine with troops - sending a message of business as usual.
A video released by the defence ministry on Monday showed Sergei Shoigu flying in a plane with a colleague and hearing reports at a command post.
It was unclear when or where the video, which has no audio, was shot.
The rebellion and its abrupt ending, with no apparent penalties for the perpetrators, were followed on Monday by other official moves to return the country to normal.
Russia's ally China, which a senior Russian diplomat visited on Sunday, said it supported Moscow in maintaining national stability.
What is happening to Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Under the deal announced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Mr Prigozhin will go to neighbouring Belarus and charges of mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped.
The government said it also would not prosecute fighters who took part, while those who did not join in were to be offered contracts by the defence ministry.
led by his one-time protege, whose forces seized a key military facility in southern Russia before advancing on the capital.
In a televised speech to the nation, he called the rebellion a "betrayal" and "treason."
In allowing Mr Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Mr Peskov said, Mr Putin's "highest goal" was "to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results".
Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armoured vehicles and troops on the city's southern edge.
Red Square was shut down and the mayor urged motorists to stay off some roads.
About 3,000 Chechen soldiers were pulled from fighting in Ukraine and rushed there early on Saturday, state television in Chechnya reported, signalling the Kremlin's desperation as the Wagner troops advanced to, according to Mr Prigozhin, 200 kilometres from Moscow.
But after the deal was struck, Mr Prigozhin announced he had decided to retreat to avoid "shedding Russian blood".
His troops were ordered back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers.
Mr Prigozhin demanded the removal of defence minister Sergei Shoigu, long the target of his withering criticism for his conduct of the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, he accused forces under Mr Shoigu's command of attacking Wagner camps and killing "a huge number of our comrades".
Mr Prigozhin did not say whether the Kremlin had responded to his demand.
Early on Saturday, his private army appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov, a city 1,000km south of Moscow, which runs Russian operations in Ukraine, Britain's ministry of defence said.
Wagner Group troops retreat
A video from the city posted on Russian messaging app channels showed people cheering Wagner troops as they left Rostov-on-Don.
Mr Prigozhin was seen riding in one of the vehicles, and people greeted him and some ran to shake his hand as he lowered the window. The regional governor later said that all of the troops had left the city.
Wagner troops and equipment also were in Lipetsk province, about 360 kilometres south of Moscow.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is a former Putin ally. Source: AAP / AP
On the southern outskirts, troops erected checkpoints, arranged sandbags and set up machine guns. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin declared Monday a non-working day for most residents as part of the heightened security, a measure that remained in effect even after the retreat.
Wagner revolt exposed Russian 'chaos'
The dramatic developments came exactly 16 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe's largest conflict since World War II, which has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and reduced cities to rubble.
Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting would create opportunities for their army to take back territory seized by Russian forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Saturday, shortly before Prigozhin announced his retreat, that the march exposed weakness in the Kremlin and "showed all Russian bandits, mercenaries, oligarchs" it was easy to capture Russian cities "and, probably, arsenals".
Mr Prigozhin had vowed earlier that his fighters, whom he said number some 25,000, would not surrender because "we do not want the country to live on in corruption, deceit and bureaucracy".
The short-lived rebellion came as Russia is "fighting the toughest battle for its future," Mr Putin said, with the West piling sanctions on Moscow and arming Ukraine.
Wagner troops have played a crucial role in the Ukraine war, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place.
But Mr Prigozhin has increasingly criticised the military brass, accusing it of incompetence and of starving his troops of munitions.
The 62-year-old has longstanding ties to Putin and won lucrative Kremlin catering contracts that earned him the nickname "Putin's chef".
