The first armed uprising attempted in Russia in three decades started with a crackly voice-note left on the Telegram messenger app.
It was warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, accusing the army’s leadership of “murdering tens of thousands of Russian soldiers” as a result of their disastrous invasion of Ukraine.
Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group of mercenaries fighting for Russia in east Ukraine, had been complaining about the leaders of the regular army for many months. But this time was different. Prigozhin and his men were about to launch an audacious march on Moscow to “punish” the defence minister and army top brass.
“Wagner’s commanders have come to a decision. The evil being spread by the country’s military leadership must be stopped,” Prigozhin said in the short recorded message, issued at around 9pm local time on Friday.
The warlord, his voice seething with anger, said his men who numbered 25,000 would start moving from their base camps in east Ukraine towards Moscow.
“I ask everyone to get out of our way. Those who try to stop us, we will consider them a threat and destroy them immediately,” he said. “This is not a military coup. It is a march for justice.”
Stunned officials scrambled to respond. Late on Friday, the FSB security service announced it had opened a criminal case against Prigozhin for “organising an armed insurrection”.
A top army general Sergei Surovikin recorded a video calling on Wagner fighters to lay down their arms. An urgent news bulletin was screened on the state’s Channel One and the anchor attempted to rebut Prigozhin’s claims. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that President Vladimir Putin had been informed.
Security was tightened in Moscow and during the night people shared photos of military vehicles in the street. But the focal point of the insurrection quickly became Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, home to the army’s Southern command, which is in charge of the war in Ukraine.
The large port city is just a two-hour drive from occupied areas of east Ukraine, where Wagner have their base camps. And by the early hours of Saturday morning, their mercenaries had arrived.
Wagner tanks and armoured vehicles were spotted across the city. Heavily armed soldiers jumped out and encircled key buildings: the military headquarters, the local government building, the head office of the FSB.
Andrei, a local blogger, filmed the scenes while crossing the city to go to work. “Rostov. 9am. People are panicking, that’s for sure. Everyone is outside trying to figure out what’s going on . . . Everyone’s afraid,” he said in the video.
He filmed a roadblock set up by the police. Behind it, Wagner men stood guard. At another crossroads, he found men from the mercenary group sitting in a pick-up truck with a machine gun set up on the back. The situation appeared calm, but Wagner had taken control of the city.
Prigozhin was filmed in the army’s Rostov HQ, which his forces had seized, sitting down for a terse conversation with Russia’s deputy minister of defence.
Across the rest of the country, authorities started to take down Wagner banners and billboards. Its head office in St Petersburg, a sparkling glass skyscraper, was encircled by the police. Moscow and the Moscow region announced its security status was moving to a counter-terrorism level, including random ID checks and increased surveillance.
State TV programming remained routine, filled with cheery morning cooking shows and series, but at 10am Moscow time it was interrupted by an emergency broadcast by Putin.
“Internal traitors,” the president said, speaking to camera, have “allowed their personal interests to lead them to treason”. Wagner had organised a mutiny. “Action will be taken.”
As he spoke, a convoy of Wagner vehicles and fighters was pressing north from Rostov up the M4 highway which leads to Moscow. Tanks and other vehicles moved in small units.
By midday on Saturday, the column was heading through the Voronezh region. The army attempted to intercept it. Reports of clashes emerged.
“Operational and combat activities” are taking place in the region, the Voronezh governor warned. “Frontline aviation is working along the M4 highway,” the Rybar Telegram channel, run by a former defence ministry press secretary, wrote. A helicopter was shot down.
Eyewitnesses in the villages that run along the highway in Voronezh region shared videos of artillery fire and explosions in the distance with combat helicopters above. Russians could not believe the scenes: “bombing Voronezh” is a popular meme, a byword for Russia shooting itself in the foot. Now, the meme had become a reality.
“It was really loud and frightening, people’s roofs were destroyed and windows were shattered. From what I understood, Wagner fighters were attacked and they were protecting themselves,” a woman from the village of Pavlovsk in Voronezh region said.
She saw “two columns [of Wagner vehicles] about 3km length each” heading towards Voronezh’s regional capital. “They were so heavily armed, I have not seen military equipment like this ever in my life,” she added.
Another woman in an eastern suburb of the city of Voronezh shared a video of a helicopter passing just a few metres above her roof. “This just flew over our house,” she wrote. “When we first read the news from Rostov, we stayed calm and continued smoking shisha in our backyard. Well, it’s not a shisha-smoking vibe anymore.”
At about 1pm local time, as a helicopter flew over an oil depot on the left bank of the Voronezh river, residents heard a loud explosion and saw flames breaking out. A tall column of black smoke billowing over the depot was visible from the city centre.
Several news agencies reported that Wagner units “had taken control of military facilities in Voronezh”, though none of the locals had seen paramilitary fighters or vehicles in the city.
“I took a drive through the city. There was nothing unusual at all, the streets were clear. The only thing I noticed were the queues at the gas stations. People thought we were running out of gas because the oil depot was on fire,” a man from Voronezh said.
Meanwhile in Rostov, Wagner forces continued to hold the city. Some residents took selfies with the soldiers, others clambered up on to tanks. Some mercenaries were photographed sipping coffee and buying takeaway lunches.
The army’s attempts to intercept the Wagner convoy failed, and it continued to head north. By 4pm it had reached the Lipetsk region, 400km from the southern edge of Moscow.
Local authorities in the regions to the north of the convoy rushed to find ways to prevent the column’s advance. Roads were blocked with school buses and trucks. Diggers appeared on the highway and began to tear holes in the asphalt. The Oka river, which cuts across the region just south of Moscow, became a key defence line for the capital. Bridges across it were blocked by the army.
The turmoil caused widespread amusement in Ukraine, where jokes about popcorn running out in supermarkets flew around social media. Politicians revelled in the display of Russian weakness.
“The tragicomedy of recent days eloquently explains to the leaders of other countries why Ukraine does not see it possible to negotiate with Putin’s Russia today,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian president. “The days of this gang are numbered, there is no master in the house.”
As the convoy pressed closer to Moscow, Russians’ fears of a bloody clash with the army mounted. But suddenly, as evening fell, Prigozhin had a fresh message for his fellow citizens.
“In the space of 24 hours, we have made it as far as 200km away from Moscow,” he said in a new voice recording on Telegram.
“Now is the moment when blood could be spilled,” he said. In order to avoid this, “we are turning our convoy around”.
Simultaneously, a statement was issued by the office of the president of Belarus, a close Putin ally. Alexander Lukashenko had been negotiating with Prigozhin all day, on Putin’s request. They had struck a deal. Wagner would pull back to its bases in eastern Ukraine and Prigozhin would go to Belarus.
As night fell in Rostov, residents watched Wagner fighters preparing to depart from the city. People cheered the mercenaries; shouts of “Strength to Wagner!” rung out. Prigozhin appeared and received a hero’s welcome.
By Sunday morning, Wagner had crossed out of Russia, back into occupied Ukraine. Little sign was left of the coup. Rostov’s mayor said the militia’s tank treads had damaged 10,000 sq m of the city’s asphalt — work to restore the tarmac would begin immediately.
Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv
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