"We fought for the country, not for some bald idiot and his personal ambitions"

"We fought for the country, not for some bald idiot and his personal ambitions"

"Will I be able to shoot my comrades?" was the question that tormented Vlad during the armed rebellion of his former comrades on June 24.

A convoy of rebel mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin advanced toward Moscow and Russia seemed on the brink of civil war. Vlad feared that he would be sent to defend the capital against his former comrades.

After the rebellion, which ended with Prigozhin and his men agreeing to go into exile in Belarus, several former and current Wagner fighters who spoke to The Moscow Times shared different views on the rebellion and its impact on the future of the private military company.

Like other former mercenaries, 29-year-old Vlad blamed Prigozhin for causing the conflict between Russian soldiers because of his personal feud with the Russian Ministry of Defense.

"I would never allow myself to point a weapon at my own people and, in a sense, against our own country," Vlad said. He states that he applied to Wagner to "defend his country" and not "out of sympathy for Prigozhin".

"My comrades and I fought for the country, not for some bald idiot and his personal ambitions," added 35-year-old Roman, another former Wagner mercenary from Moscow.

Roman decided to leave his job in finance to join Wagner last year out of a sense of "civic duty".

"My country is at war and I cannot stand by," said the former mercenary, who spent nine months on the front line in Ukraine, advancing with his unit from Popasna to Bakhmut. For his service, he was awarded the Black Cross, one of Wagner's military decorations.