Putin and Wagner Group founder said to hold meeting after aborted rebellion

Russia’s weird, murky power struggle got even weirder and murkier Monday, as the Kremlin revealed President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin shortly after his mercenary army called off an abortive coup late last month and Mr. Prigozhin reportedly fled into exile in Belarus.

Mr. Putin, whose grip on power was shaken by the mutiny, publicly denounced his one-time confidant as a treasonous backstabber for leading an armed mutiny against the country’s military leadership, but agreed to hold the previously undisclosed three-hour meeting with Mr. Prigozhin and his supporters just days after the incident.

On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two men held talks on June 29, five days after Mr. Prigozhin launched his brief rebellion and railed against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, for their oversight of the troubled invasion of Ukraine. Wagner Group troops had been fighting alongside regular Russian military forces in the Ukraine campaign.

The three-hour meeting was the first known contact between the two men since the Wagner Group’s armed revolt on June 24. It posed the most dramatic challenge to Mr. Putin’s hold on power in Russia in decades.

Most of the other Wagner Group’s top leadership also attended the meeting with the Russian president and were reportedly allowed to air their grievances against the country’s military leadership. Mr. Peskov did not say where it had taken place or if Mr. Shoigu or Gen. Gerasimov was present.

“The president gave an assessment of the company’s actions at the front,” in Ukraine, Mr. Peskov said, according to the state-controlled RIA Novosti news agency. He “also gave his assessments of the events of June 24, listened to the explanations of the commanders, and offered them further options for employment.”

The Wagner Group commanders, who have significant operations in Syria and Africa as well as Ukraine, reportedly also pledged their loyalty to the Russian president.

“They emphasized that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the supreme command in chief,” said Mr. Peskov, who just a few days ago was telling reporters the Kremlin did not know where the mercenary chief was.

There has been widespread speculation about the location of Gen. Gerasimov since the aborted June 23-24 mutiny. On Monday, Russian defense officials released a video on their Telegram social media page that showed him being briefed by military officials on the status of their military operations in Ukraine. His predecessor in charge of the Ukraine war, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, still has not made an appearance since the mutiny, amid reports he might have known the rebellion was being planned but failed to act.

Mr. Prigozhin’s whereabouts also remain a mystery. He hasn’t made any public appearance since he was granted safe haven in a deal brokered by Aleksandr Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of neighboring Belarus. The Wagner Group founder had been a regular presence on social media before the mutiny but has stopped posting responses to media questions on his Telegram page.

On June 24, Wagner Group forces rolled through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and seized an important regional military headquarters there before beginning their short march on Moscow, firing at one point on Russian planes sent to stop their advance. Mr. Prigozhin claimed from the start that the Wagner Group operations weren’t directed at Mr. Putin but at removing Minister Shoigu and General Gerasimov from power.

For months before the mutiny, Mr. Prigozhin openly mocked the country’s top military leaders. He blamed them for the Russian military’s poor performance in Ukraine and the way they were running what Moscow calls its “special military operation.”

Mr. Prigozhin claimed that Russian military troops, acting on the orders of the country’s military leaders, launched rocket and bomb attacks on their camps. Russian defense officials and the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor of the Soviet-era KGB, both denied that they attacked the Wagner Group personnel.

As Kremlin officials try to smooth over internal tensions arising from the Wagner Group rebellion, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy on Monday again pressed his country’s claim to formally join NATO ahead of this week’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

“It is still clear that Ukraine deserves to be in the alliance. Not now — there is a war — but we need a clear signal and we need this signal right now,” he said in an address to the nation.

He said Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia is the linchpin of NATO’s security. More than a year’s worth of fighting against Moscow has made them a member of the alliance for all intents and purposes, Mr. Zelenskyy said.

“Our weapons are the weapons of the alliance. Our values are what the alliance believes in,” he said. “Our defense is the very element of the formula of Europe that makes it united, free, and peaceful. Vilnius must confirm all this.”