Russia drops charges against Prigozhin and others who took part in brief rebellion

Russian authorities said Tuesday that they have dropped criminal charges against mutinist Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin — as the rogue mercenary leader apparently arrived in Belarus to start his exile.

The stunning decision not to charge was made shortly before President Vladimir Putin addressed some 2,500 security personnel in a red-carpeted Kremlin square — thanking them for having “stopped a civil war.”

“Pilots, our combat comrades, died while confronting the mutiny,” he said, with local media claiming at least a dozen airmen were killed as six helicopters and a military communications plane were shot down during the advance on Moscow.

It was Putin’s third speech in four days about the weekend mutiny, the biggest challenge to his rule that he’s faced in more than two decades in power.

A day earlier, a palpably angry Putin called Prigozhin’s mercenaries traitors, while warning that they “must understand that they will be brought to justice.”

The mercenaries had faced up to 20 years in prison on a charge of mounting an armed mutiny.

Many experts also predicted that Prigozhin, 62, was effectively a “dead man walking.”

However, Russian officials announced an extraordinary U-turn Tuesday, saying that a criminal investigation into the armed rebellion had already been closed — with no charges for any of the participants, including Prigozhin.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said that charges were not needed because those involved in the mutiny “ceased activities directed at committing the crime.”

Soon before that announcement, a private jet previously linked to Prigozhin was seen landing at a military airfield near the Belarus capital Minsk, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.

The Embraer Legacy 600 jet, with codes matching a plane linked to Prigozhin in US sanctions documents, took off from Rostov, the southern Russian city that his mercenaries captured on Saturday.

There has been no confirmation of who was on board the plane but Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly confirmed Prigozhin, 62, had arrived in his country, The Telegraph reported, citing Belarusian state news agency BELTA.

Lukashenko, the Putin ally who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for 29 years, also confirmed in a Tuesday address that he had put his own armed forces on a combat footing as the weekend mutiny unfolded, framing it as an existential risk to the region. 

“If Russia collapses, we all will perish under the debris,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, told a news briefing Tuesday that he had no idea where the Wagner chief was.

He said only that Putin had provided Prigozhin with “certain promises … certain guarantees” with the apparent amnesty deal in Belarus aimed at avoiding a “worst-case scenario.”

Despite Putin’s own admission that it had been close to “a civil war,” Peskov dismissed suggestions that Putin’s grip on power had been shaken as “hysteria.”

The Wagner Group has played a key role in the 16-month Ukraine war — leaving Prigozhin furious with how military leaders ran the drawn-out mission.

On Monday, the ex-convict once dubbed “Putin’s Chef” claimed his weekend march on Moscow wasn’t a coup but a “master class” in how the war should have been waged.

“We went as a demonstration of protest, not to overthrow the government of the country,” Prigozhin claimed.

Prigozhin had sought to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu — who was instead by Putin’s side during Tuesday’s military event, a clear show of support.

Earlier, the authorities released a video of Shoigu reviewing troops in Ukraine.

The media team for Prigozhin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address that the military had made advances on Monday in all sectors of the front line, calling it a “happy day.”

Kyiv hopes the chaos caused by the mutiny attempt in Russia will undermine Russian defenses as Ukraine presses on with a counteroffensive to recapture occupied territory.

With Post wires