Police officers in the Moscow region will receive training aimed at preparing to thwart any future mutiny attempt, according to Russian media.
Moscow's officers will be taught a battery of new skills, which include urban combat tactics, how to fire light machine guns, throw grenades and tactical medicine, Kremlin-aligned Telegram channel Mash said on Wednesday. The weapons they will be trained on will be the RPK-74, the AKS-74U the AK-74 and the Makarov semi-automatic pistol for "urban clashes."
"According to our information, the innovations were decided because of the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin," Mash wrote in the report picked up by other Russian outlets.
On June 24, Wagner troops seized military facilities in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and marched on Moscow to overthrow the Russian military establishment, which Prigozhin has condemned for its conduct during the war in Ukraine.
Mash reported that on the day of the mutiny and the day after, personnel from the Moscow region's Ministry of Internal Affairs were transferred to the capital for reinforcement.
"The department's management analyzed the case and decided to upgrade the skills of employees," the outlet said, also writing that male officers had approved of the decision but most female officers did not: "Most of them are very unhappy are take every opportunity to avoid tactical exercises on training grounds."
Prigozhin reportedly struck a deal mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to end the mutiny although questions remain over how the Wagner Group founder managed to stage a march on the Russian capital.
It comes amid reports that the Russian president "fled" Moscow during the mutiny, as did former President Dmitry Medvedev.
Yuri Felshtinsky, a Russian security services expert and author of Blowing up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror Putin "had a feeling that something is going on that he is not able to control."
"The question is if he was afraid of Wagner or did he know that somebody else was behind it, that something else is going on," he told Newsweek, suggesting that Prigozhin may have had the support of the FSB, Russia's main intelligence agency.
"The moment he left Moscow, Putin lost power," Felshtinsky said. "Whether he lost power for several hours, lost it completely, or whether he regained it partially or in full, we will probably start to understand within the next week or two."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
