The Russian authorities have announced on Tuesday the closure of the case opened for armed rebellion after the uprising carried out on Saturday by the Wagner Group, after a deal mediated by Belarus so that the head of the group, Yevgeni Prigozhin, to order his forces to halt their advance towards the Russian capital, Moscow.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) has indicated that during the investigations it has been determined that the participants in the uprising put an end to their “criminal actions”, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“In the framework of the investigation of a case opened on June 23 by the Investigative Department of the FSB under article 279 of the Criminal Code of Russia for the fact of an armed rebellion, it has been established that the participants stopped their actions on June 24intended directly to commit a crime,” he specified.

Thus, the body has emphasized that “taking into account this and other circumstances relevant to the investigation, the investigating authority has decided this June 27 to issue a decision to close the case”.

Drop of charges against Prigozhin

The announcement came a day after Russian media reported that the rebellion case against Prigozhin was still open, following Moscow’s commitment to drop the charges against him under the said agreement.

The case was opened late on Friday, although on Saturday the Kremlin announced that the agreement reached with the Wagner Group to end its advance on Moscow included the drop of charges against Prigozhin and his transfer to Belarus, whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, had worked as a mediator.

After the agreement, Prigozhin ordered the members of the group to abandon the positions taken during their advance, including their withdrawal from the center of the city of Rostov-on-Don, with a view to reducing tensions, derived from their fight against the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Army in the framework of the invasion of Ukraine, unleashed in February 2022 by order of Russian President Vladimir Putin.