Prigozhin breaks his silence with an 11-minute audio message

Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Monday that his rebellion aimed at saving his group, not overthrowing the Russian leadership.
“We went to protest, not to overthrow the power in the country,” Prigozhin said in an 11-minute audio message in which he didn’t reveal his whereabouts, the first since he called for rebellion last weekend.
Prigozhin also said that the advance of his group towards Moscow two days ago revealed “serious security problems” in Russia, stressing that his men traveled a distance of 780 kilometers without encountering any significant resistance.
“The march revealed serious security problems in this country,” Prigozhin said.
He also asserted that his men received support from the townspeople they crossed during their rebellion in Russia.
“Civilians were welcoming us with Russian flags and Wagner slogans… They were happy when we arrived and passed by them,” he said in his first audio recording broadcast since the end of the armed rebellion on Saturday evening.
Prigozhin said that “Lukashenko reached out and offered to find solutions in order to continue the work of the Wagner Group in a legitimate way,” considering that the actual goal of the armed rebellion was to save Wagner, which, in his view, was threatened with dismantling by the authorities.