By Diana Magnay, Moscow correspondent
A late-night address from Vladimir Putin offering Wagner fighters a choice: sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence, go back home, or go to Belarus.
He did not name Yevgeny Prigozhin – he tends not to name men he considers his enemies.Â
But he did say that his armed rebellion was exactly what Russia’s enemies, Kyiv and the West, wanted: fratricide, Russians spilling Russian blood.Â
A criminal act overcome only by the consolidation of society, he said.
Not that the Russian public had had much to do with any of this.
Prigozhin had pulled his men back after what appears to have been a good deal of mediation by several intermediaries, not just Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Putin fears a fractured society and wants to emphasise that attempts to divide the nation will get nowhere.
But what Saturday showed was that there are significant cracks, however Putin papers over them.
The nation expected Putin to give them a sense of direction.
This was a strange halfway house, saying lots and none at all.
Prigozhin’s ultimate fate is still unclear.Â
But Aleksandr Lukashenko is due to give a speech on Tuesday.
Perhaps we will find out more then. Â
