Air tickets for direct flights from Moscow to Tbilisi, Astana and Istanbul are no longer available from Saturday, the portal of the German weekly Der Spiegel reported. There was speculation in social networks that the elite of Moscow would leave the city in the face of the arrival of the mercenaries of the Wagner Group.
“Spiegel” notes that a number of private flights leaving were observed on the Flightradar24 platform Russiaand the visegrad24 portal reported that the government machine that he uses on a daily basis Vladimir Putin left Moscow and flies to St. Petersburg.
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On Saturday morning, the leader of the rebel mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced that he was at the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, waiting for the arrival of the Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. He threatened that otherwise the Wagnerians would “go to Moscow”.
The Wagner Group rebels against Putin
There were also reports that the Wagner Group had taken control of all military facilities in Voronezh, a city 500 km south of the Russian capital. Vladimir Putin on Saturday called the soldiers of the mercenary Wagner Group traitors and assured that the rebels would be held accountable to the law and the nation, and that Russia would be defended. Prigozhin declared after Putin’s speech that the Wagner Group would not give up in the fight against the regular Russian army.
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