Australian PM: Wagner’s rebellion has destabilized Russian regime

Sydney, Australia, June 26 (EFE).- Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday that the rebellion of the Wagner mercenary group against Moscow over the weekend has destabilized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s country.

“Quite clearly, you can’t have events like that and just wipe them out, pretend that you will go back to stability,” Albanese told Australia’s public broadcaster ABC.

Albanese said Wagner’s rebellion is a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has not only been a “disaster” for the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, but for Putin himself because he “overplayed his hand and he got it wrong.”

“The best thing that Mr Putin can do is to withdraw from this illegal invasion, respect international law, respect the sovereignty of Ukraine,” said the prime minister of Australia, one of the non-NATO countries that has given Kiev the most arms aid since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24 2022.

Last weekend, Putin’s forces faced one of its biggest internal crises since the invasion of Ukraine, when the Wagner Group, after declaring itself in absentia, occupied the city of Rostov on Don on Saturday to replace the Russian military leadership, which it blamed for the failures of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Although Putin called the revolt a “treason,” his government reached an unprecedented agreement with mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to end the uprising and allow him to move to Belarus without charges being filed against him, under the mediation of the Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko. EFE

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