The head of the Wagner mercenary company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has agreed to leave Russia and settle in Belarus under a deal announced by the Kremlin after he ended a mutiny by thousands of his heavily armed fighters, described as the most serious threat to the Russian president Vladimir Putin 23 years in power.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said late last night that the criminal investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for his armed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership would be dropped and that the oligarch-turned-warlord would be allowed to settle in Belarusian territory.

The Russian army (1.5 million strong) was put on alert because of the mutiny, which lasted about 24 hours, during which Mr Prigozhin’s mercenaries seized the military headquarters in Rostov, a key command center for the war in Ukraine, while thousands of them marched to Moscow in a motorcade — raising the specter of civil war and attracting the attention of the entire world.

The armed stand-off by the mercenaries ended as suddenly as it began, with the war-experienced fighters a few hundred kilometers from the Russian capital, after Minsk lobbied to end the crisis.

Wagner’s forces withdrew from Rostov-on-Don and were returning to their camps last night, regional governor Vasily Golubev told Russia’s TASS news agency today.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has had a personal relationship with Yevgeny Prigozhin for twenty years.

According to Kremlin spokesman Peskov, in a telephone conversation with the Belarusian president, Mr. Putin expressed his gratitude for the mediation and the agreement granting asylum to Mr. Prigozhin in Belarus, stressing that it allowed bloodshed to be avoided.

Yesterday morning, in his extraordinary speech, Mr. Putin declared that the “traitors” who rebelled would be “punished”, speaking of a “stab in the back”.

However, under the deal, Wagner’s fighters and commanders will not face prosecution, in part because of their service on the Ukrainian fronts, according to Mr. Peskov.

The representative of the Russian presidency did not specify whether the agreement provides for other concessions.

“Our phalanxes are turning back and returning to the campaign camps, in the opposite direction,” Mr. Prigozhin said in an audio message uploaded to the Telegram platform.

Until last night “not a drop of blood of our fighters” had been shed, he assured, but “the moment was coming when our blood would be shed” and this was one of the reasons he decided to end the rebellion.

Yesterday morning, he vowed that he and his 25,000 fighters were “ready to die”.

It is not clear what the plans are for Mr Prigozhin, 61, who has secured billions thanks to contracts he signed with the Russian state.

The Kremlin spokesman also said he was not aware of any change in President Putin’s attitude towards Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom the head of state says he trusts.

The minister has been the main target of Mr Prigozhin’s increasingly frequent outbursts of anger of late.

Wagner’s founder blamed Mr. Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, a top Russian military chief of staff, for incompetence and a series of failures and defeats in Ukraine.

The businessman’s public conflict with the Russian military leadership took a dramatic turn yesterday Friday, when Mr Prigozhin alleged that the regular army had launched attacks against his forces, inflicting heavy casualties on them.

Wagner has played a key role in the war Moscow launched by invading Ukraine 16 months ago, notably capturing the town of Bakhmut after roughly a year of heavy fighting. Her mercenaries were often spearheads, supported by the professional army.

After the attack against his mercenaries, which the Russian Ministry of Defense categorically denied was launched by the Russian army, the head of Wagner declared that he would “march for justice” to Moscow, that he would “punish” those responsible.

Thousands of his mercenaries had made it about half way, reaching Lipetsk yesterday evening, before being ordered back.

Emergency measures were being taken in Moscow and other parts of Russia, with thousands of soldiers deployed and ready for battle.

However, in the early hours of the morning, it was announced that all the restrictive measures were lifted, after the “armed rebellion” came to an end.

After Vladimir Putin’s speech yesterday morning, Yevgeny Prigozhin rejected the “traitor” label: “the president is making a very serious mistake,” he countered, “we are patriots.”

This was the first time that the founder of Wagner, who until now was said to be a man of complete confidence of the Russian president, openly defied him.

Moscow has so far not released any official casualty tally of Wagner’s “armed standoff”. In particular, information is circulating on the Internet about the downing of no less than six Russian military helicopters with MANPADS (including portable anti-aircraft missiles) and self-propelled anti-aircraft defense systems of the Wagner mercenaries.