Admission that Russia paid 86bn roubles to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenaries this year is potentially significant, say legal experts
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to end a coup by the Wagner group may have made it easier for an international court to prosecute him, and the Russian state, for war crimes committed by the mercenary fighters, according to experts in international law.
After the mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin said the mercenaries had been “fully funded” by Russian authorities. In the year to May 2023 alone, they received more than 86bn roubles from the state budget, or over a billion dollars, he added.
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