Employees of a Moscow company were handed weapons as Wagner fighters approached the capital, report says

• A Moscow company handed employees weapons during the Wagner rebellion, a report said. 
• Fighters from the mercenary group approached Moscow Saturday, prompting panic. 
• But the rebellion was ultimately called off after a deal was brokered with the Kremlin. 

A Moscow company handed employees weapons as fighters from the Wagner private army approached the Russian capital on Saturday, The Moscow Times reported. 

The outlet said that rich Muscovites fled the city on private planes, while other armed themselves to fight, as soldiers bore down on the capital seeking to oust Russian military leaders.

After a televised address by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which he branded the mutineers traitors and vowed to defeat them, one state-owned company handed out guns to employees, the outlet reported. 

“Our office is a secure facility in the center of Moscow. After Putin’s address, we were called in for a meeting and those of us with combat experience or who served in the military were asked to patrol the street and alley where the office is located,” a top manager of the state-owned company told The Moscow times.

“Those who agreed were given weapons. The security services organized everything, but they weren’t the only ones who went on patrol.”

Russian military and security services put up hasty barriers and dug up roads as they prepared to defend the capital from the fighters on Saturday. 

Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, declared a counter-terrorism operation was underway, Reuters reported, ordering residents to stay in their homes.

The Wagner Group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed the armed rebellion was aimed at getting rid of the military’s top brass, which he blamed for the failings in Ukraine.

As his fighters got to around 120 miles from Moscow on Saturday, Prigozhin that night called off the rebellion after negotiations with the Kremlin. He has since gone into exile in Belarus.

By Sunday, scenes of normality had returned to Moscow, and the counter-terrorism order was cancelled. Analysts, however, believe Putin’s authority has been badly damaged by the uprising, which  followed nearly a year-and-a-half of war in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “Everyone who chooses the path of evil destroys himself. Whoever throws hundreds of thousands into the war, eventually must barricade himself in the Moscow region from those whom he himself armed.”