Russian state TV on Wednesday launched a fierce attack on Yevgeny Prigozhin, the exiled mercenary leader of an aborted armed mutiny last month, and said an investigation into what had happened was still being vigorously pursued.
Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, took control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on June 24, seized the command centre there where Russia coordinates its war in Ukraine, and sent a column of fighters towards Moscow before standing down after striking a deal with the Kremlin.
Under the agreement which ended the mutiny, Prigozhin, whose aim had been to topple the defence minister and chief of the General Staff for what he cast as their incompetent prosecution of the war, was meant to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. In exchange, criminal charges against him were meant to be dropped.
The programme's host, lawmaker Yevgeny Popov, called Prigozhin "a traitor" and the footage was presented by a specially invited guest - journalist Eduard Petrov - as proof of Prigozhin's criminal past and hypocrisy in calling out corruption in the armed forces. "Nobody planned to close this case. The investigation is ongoing," said Petrov, who said investigators had concluded that a video used by Prigozhin as a pretext to start the mutiny which showed an alleged Russian strike on a mercenary camp was a fake."I consider that the creation of Yevgeny Prigozhin's image as a people's hero was all done by media fed by Yevgeny Prigozhin," said Petrov, referring to media outlets financed by Prigozhin.
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