Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the country paid more than $1 billion to the Wagner mercenary group in salaries and motivation to keep their morale high in the war again Ukraine in the past 12 months.
Putin spoke on Tuesday while addressing defence officials in televised remarks to commence a meeting.
The Wagner group had last week staged a failed mutiny, which some analysts believe would have resulted in the ouster of Putin as Russian leader.
“The state paid to the Wagner group 86.262 billion rubles (around $1 billion) for salaries for fighters and incentive rewards between May 2022 and May 2023 alone,” Putin said.
Russia once denied the very existence of Wagner, a shadowy mercenary army that defends Moscow’s interests with operations in several African and Middle Eastern states.
But since its fighters became one of the mainstays of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, Wagner’s chief an ally of Putin and a former Kremlin catering contractor Yevgeny Prigozhin has gone public.
On Saturday, Wagner launched a revolt — ostensibly to resist efforts to fold it into the official ministry of defence structure — seized an army headquarters and marched on Moscow.
Putin has condemned this as a betrayal, and ordered that Wagner lose its heavy weaponry, while its fighters either join the regular armed forces or accept exile in Belarus.
“The content of the entire Wagner group was fully provided by the state, from the Ministry of Defence, from the state budget. We fully funded this group,” Putin said.
Previously the group enjoyed heroic status as part of the Ukraine offensive.
Even while criticising Wagner in the wake of Saturday’s revolt, Putin was clear not to attack rank-and-file troops, “because they really showed courage and heroism”.
