Wagner boss gets back handgun awarded by Minister Shoigu

Founder of the Wagner PMC and business magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin has received back his personal Glock handgun, which was awarded to him by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The motorcade of the businessman arrived at Liteiny Prospekt in St. Petersburg on July 4. The Wagner boss himself got out of it, and his entourage took two Saiga carbines, a rifled Austrian Steyr Mannlicher carbine, a semi-automatic rifle "ARKA" and several other guns and pistols, according to Fontanka.

Earlier, Prigozhin had been officially invited to St. Petersburg to hand over the seized weapons.

The arsenal was found on June 24 at the entrepreneur's country residence in the high-end cottage village of Severny Versailles in the city's Primorsky district.

On July 2, Prigozhin was already returned 10 billion roubles ($111.7 million).

On the evening of 23 June, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that the regular Russian army had launched a missile strike on the Wagner mercenaries’ rear camps. He, therefore, deployed 25,000 of his mercenaries "to restore justice".

On 24 June, the Wagner mercenaries took control of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and seized military facilities in Voronezh, and were on their way to Moscow, and the Russian capital was already preparing for defence.

In the evening of the same day, after a conversation with self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin said that his mercenaries were returning to field camps. The criminal case against Prigozhin in Russia was promised to be closed, and he was to "go to Belarus".

On 27 June, Prigozhin's business jet left from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don for Belarus, and another plane arrived there from St Petersburg.