Prigozhin and his troops won’t face criminal charges over his attempted coup in Russia, the Kremlin said.
US spy agencies had learned in mid-June about armed action being planned by Wagner mercenary group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, said a report.
There were “enough signals to be able to tell the leadership [in the US] that something was up”, a report by The Washington Post said, citing an unnamed US official. “So I think they were ready for it.”
Meanwhile, Mr Prigozhin and his troops won’t face criminal charges over his attempted coup in Russia, the Kremlin said.
He will be moved to Belarus, a close ally of Russia, after his mercenary army captured army bases in two Russian cities but called off their advance on Moscow at the 11th hour to “avoid bloodshed,” the Independent UK reports.
The move marked a humiliating climbdown for Vladimir Putin after he earlier vowed to take revenge on those behind the mutiny. Wagner’s forces were about four hours away from Moscow when news of the dramatic turnaround came.
On Saturday, Mr Putin’s whereabouts came into question after an aircraft belonging to the presidency was spotted flying from Moscow to St Petersburg. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied Mr Putin had fled.
Wagner’s armed rebellion dramatically called off its march towards Moscow on Saturday, abandoning a coup that saw soldiers take control of the military headquarters in both Rostov and Voronezh.
Rogue Russian mercenary fighters had their efforts labelled as “treason” by Vladimir Putin after the shock advance that began on Friday evening.
The mutiny, called off when troops were just four hours from the Russian capital in a deal brokered by Belarus, marked one of the most explosive episodes in the country’s war saga to date.
The move came after the group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the Kremlin of deliberately bombing Wagner troops in Bakhmut.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has called the instalment “the most significant challenge to the Russian state” in a series of events that are set to put the city firmly on the map.