Russian President Vladimir Putin has said ‘any blackmail is doomed to fail’ as he addressed the nation this evening.

The Russian president was speaking from the Kremlin – and vowed that those involved in the weekend’s ‘criminal activity’ will be brought to justice.

Putin said in a statement the ‘organisers of this rebellion will be brought to justice’ and that the rebellion was ‘criminal activity which is aimed at weakening the country’.

In a statement he said that ‘any kind of blackmail is doomed to failure’ and that the mutiny leaders ‘wanted our society to be fragmented’.

He thanked the Russian public for its ‘support, patriotism and solidarity’ since the rebellion and Belarus’s Lukashenko for a peaceful resolution.

‘Virtually the entirety of Russian society… was united by its responsibility to defend their homeland,’ Putin said.

He also thanked Wagner officials who ‘took the right decision to stop and go back to prevent bloodshed’.

Putin added that most Wagner mercenaries are ‘patriots’ who were ‘used’ by organisers of the rebellion.

The uprising was ‘doomed to fail’ and that ‘its organisers, even though they lost their sense of right and wrong, couldn’t have failed to realise that,’ he continued.

Putin also accused Ukraine of being involved and calls the revolt ‘revenge for their failed counteroffensive’.

Earlier on Monday, Prigozhin revealed he ordered his fighters to halt their advance on Moscow because he ‘did not want to shed Russian blood’.

Prigozhin broke his silence since the failed military coup at the weekend and posted an 11-minute audio message where he failed to reveal his location – despite being exiled to Belarus.

He said no-one agreed to sign a contract with the defence ministry and that his mercenary firm was bound to cease existence on July 1.

Prigozhin said: ‘We started our march because of an injustice.’

He claimed the decision to turn around the march on Moscow was because he and his fighters didn’t want to shed Russian blood.

Prigozhin also said it was not his aim to overthrow the Russian government but to demonstrate his anger with the actions of the Ministry of Defence.

The former Wagner leader also repeated his claim that his troops were attacked by Russian soldiers, saying 30 people died with more injured.

The militia revolted on Friday, with Prigozhin saying he wanted to punish defence minister Sergei Shoigu and army chief Valery Gerasimov for targeting his troops with rockets. 

He said his troops had advanced 124 miles towards Moscow in the following 24 hours, with the city braced for war.

The uprising posed the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin’s leadership in more than two decades in power.

Putin had vowed to crush the rebellion – calling it a ‘stab in the back’ – and warned anyone involved in the ‘rebellion’ will ‘suffer inevitable punishment’.

The Kremlin denied reports he had fled the capital amid several claiming aircraft linked to the president were spotted flying out as Wagner forces close in.

Prigozhin, whose forces have spearheaded the Russian advance in Ukraine, claimed to have captured the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov without firing a shot.

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