Putin says Russia paid $1 bn to Wagner group over last year

That Wagner’s leaders now be portrayed as traitors is a turn around for Russian state messaging. Previously the group enjoyed heroic status as part of the Ukraine offensive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said June 27 that Moscow had paid out last year just over $1 billion to the Wagner mercenary group, which last week staged a failed mutiny.

“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,” Mr. Putin said.

He was speaking to defence officials in televised remarks at the start of a meeting.

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 - 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.

Mr. 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.