Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday night paid tribute to the pilots who were killed in the aborted mutiny of the Wagner mercenary company, indirectly confirming reports by Russian bloggers that helicopters and planes had been shot down by the insurgents.

“The courage and self-sacrifice of the fallen hero pilots saved Russia from tragic catastrophic consequences,” the Russian president said during yesterday’s address to citizens, the first since the Wagner mutiny ended on Saturday.

No official casualty tally has been released; Moscow has not clarified either how many aircraft were shot down or how many pilots and/or crew members were killed.

However, Russian users of the Telegram platform who systematically monitor the activities of the Russian armed forces, among them the Rybar blog, which has around one million followers, spoke on Saturday of 13 to 20 airmen dead and the shooting down of three Mi-8 MTPR electronic warfare helicopters. an Ilyushin Il-18 surveillance aircraft and two attack helicopters, a Kamov Ka-52 and a Mi-35, among others. The Reuters news agency points out that it is unable to verify this information.

Mr Putin said he had let the nearly 24-hour mutiny play out because he wanted to avoid bloodshed and blamed some of Wagner’s leaders for the deaths.

“They were lied to,” he said, referring respectively to the mercenaries and their leaders, “they were pushed to death,” they were pushed to “shoot their own people.”

Without mentioning Wagner’s head, businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, by name, Mr. Putin said that those fighters from the mercenary company who decided not to sign contracts with the defense ministry could relocate to Belarus or return to civilian life.

Mr Putin, who has cast himself as usual as a guarantor of Russia’s “stability”, gave no details of the deal struck to end the rebellion or its terms in a speech yesterday.

An influential Russian parliamentarian, however, demanded that the rebels be punished.

“I do not believe that the mutineers who killed pilots, their comrades in arms, deserve forgiveness,” said Leonid Slutsky. “These people should be brought to justice and face the most severe punishment.”