The dust has yet to settle in Russia from the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries, which has posed the greatest challenge to the Kremlin since the Soviet collapse.
Fighters from the notorious private military company will be allowed to either join the regular armed forces, disband, or move to Belarus. Russian authorities have said they were dropping criminal charges against the mutineers. Prigzohin has purportedly moved -- or will move shortly -- to Belarus. Belarusian leader Alyaskandr Lukashenka said on June 27 that Prigozhin was already in the country.
For relatives of fighters who either participated in the rebellion, or who merely joined the Wagner Group, attracted by good wages or its swashbuckling reputation, or both, there's fear and uncertainty about what comes next.
In Telegram chat groups set up specifically by relatives, there's also incandescent anger at how the mutineers were treated, and anger at government officials, such as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a repeated target of Prigozhin's criticism.
"Here we are here under the thumb of the [Ukrainians]…and now the internal score settling has begun, and the [Ukrainians] can march in the city in a day," one woman wrote on June 24. She indicated she lived in Shebekino, a Russian village near the Ukrainian border that was hit by rocket fire earlier this month. Russian officials said the firing came from Ukraine.
"And then who ends up getting screwed by this score-settling between Prigozhin and Shoigu? To hell with them," she wrote. "I have an infant in my arms. My beloved has been in [Wagner] for two months, with no communication. What will happen to him now? He has already suffered so much; it's his second time" in the war.
"Prigozhin is being smashed to bits. Everyone is against him. It's just a nightmare," another woman wrote. "What will happen to our guys? Prigozhin has gone to Belarus. They're already building a new camp there. And what will happen to our guys? Turns out they're thrown like traitors to the mercy of fate.
"All these months flushed down the drain," she wrote on June 26, appearing to refer to either a boyfriend or husband. "Before leaving for Belarus, he had to resolve all his issues and affairs here, those he signed a contract with. In the end, he's responsible for it all…. It's just betrayal."
WATCH: A video obtained by Reuters shows Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group, being greeted by locals as he left Rostov-on-Don in the back seat of a car late on June 24. Supporters gathered around Wagner tanks and trucks withdrawing from the Russian city following a brief mutiny.
On June 27, Russia's main domestic security agency, the Federal Security Service, announced it was dropping its criminal investigation of the mutineers. Nevertheless, that move only deepened consternation, amid confusion whether the Wagner Group indeed would be disbanded -- as Prigozhin himself said -- and about whether the fighters would be fully incorporated in Russia's regular military.
"Tell me, what will happen to our husbands after yesterday's march?" another woman wrote on June 25, a day after the mutiny, which saw a group of Wagner soldiers racing north toward Moscow, halting just outside the capital.
Some who posted messages leveled their anger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I wanted the president to resolve the situation and not just declare that they were rebels and traitors," another woman wrote. "But for some reason, a third party settled the conflict. In the end, our president is not [Belarusian leader Alyaksandr] Lukashenka."
RFE/RL was unable to contact, or locate, the individuals who posted their messages for further comment.
'And They Call Us Bandits?'
It wasn't just relatives of Wagner fighters who were dismayed, or incensed, at how the mutiny unfolded, not to mention concerned about what comes next.
Two Wagner fighters who said they were in the convoy of military vehicles who raced toward Moscow on June 24 told RFE/RL that they were "a little disappointed" with the outcome of the mutiny.
"First, they went to demolish the system and change the government," said one of the fighters, who gave his name as Andrei and said he was from the Siberian region of Irkutsk.
"Then, Putin listened to our complaints. He learned a lot, the truth about [Shoigu], and he promised to fix everything," Andrei said. "Yes, we're a little disappointed.”
Andrei said he wouldn't agree to serve under the command of the Defense Ministry and said he was confident that Wagner "would remain on its own."
Aleksei, who also didn't give a last name and said he served as a private in Wagner, agreed.
"We won't serve under Defense Ministry command," he said. "We worked closely with them; we had to. But the lawlessness I faced with them wasn't even close to what I remember when I was last serving time."
In prison, he said, you could reach some sort of agreement with prison guards about one thing or another. Never with the Defense Ministry officers, who he said were "permanently drunk."
"They failed us many times. Not on purpose, I would say, but most likely because of being lazy. They promised to help but then failed to give us artillery support. And they call us bandits?
"No, I'm not particularly concerned that they would break us up," he said. "What, aren't there are a few private [military] campaigns going on around the world?
"It's not exactly calm in Africa. You can go to Syria not as a 'musician' but as a 'dancer,'" he said, referring to the nicknames that the Wagner Group embraced as it ramped up its recruiting efforts last year.
In the Wagner recruiting office in the Siberian city of Chita, Yury Ryazantsev, who said he has deployed several times to Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and now works as a recruiter, said he started the day on June 24 with a call from a colleague.
"I didn't know anything about Prigozhin's decision," he told RFE/RL in the hours after the mutiny started. "Just the other day I returned from the Donbas. I fought there. Nobody [there] was speaking about a rebellion. Everything was the same as always."
He said Wagner recruiters in Siberia and the Far East only learned about the mutiny after it started. He said he was unsure about the fate of the organization, in particular the leadership.
Still, he professed admiration for Prigozhin.
"You can understand Prigozhin. Imagine this: We're at war, we're liberating territories, and the Defense Ministry is hitting us," he said, referring to unconfirmed reports that a military strike on a Wagner base was what sparked the mutiny.
"More than 1,000 fighters were killed during the firing. Prigozhin couldn't just stand by. But I'm sure this rebellion won't turn into anything bad for us. Someone will come to fill his shoes. They'll replace Prigozhin with someone, and we will go on."
He said his recruiting office fielded calls and applications from men from around Siberia and the Far East who were deployed to the Donbas.
"Wagner has become all this time a salvation for those who wanted to serve the motherland, but couldn't," he said. "You understand, those who were in prison in the past couldn't join the army, so we took them.
"What I like about Wagner is that we're like a big family. Unlike the [soldiers] in the Russian Army and those mobilized, the Wagnerites don't go around boozing; they're very strict about this," he said.
Locals in Ukraine "have a more positive perception of us, because our guys don't loot, unlike the Russian military," he said.
Later in the day on June 24, the social media page of the Chita Wagner recruiting office was taken offline and Ryazantsev declined to answer further calls from RFE/RL.
Conscripts At The Gates
Wagner fighters, and their relatives, aren't the only one who are incensed by what happened on June 24. An unknown number of conscript soldiers -- young men serving their mandatory military service -- were ordered deployed to the southern city of Rostov-on-Don -- and even the Moscow region -- in response to the Wagner mutiny.
Zinaida, who asked to only use her first name, said her son called her on June 23 as Wagner forces began moving and said he and other conscripts in his unit were being deployed to Kolomna, a city located at the confluence of two rivers, southeast of Moscow.
Authorities hastily built defensive positions, with sandbags and guard posts, at several river crossings south of Moscow, in anticipation of the Wagner convoy's arrival.
"These green conscripts were preparing to meet these thugs," she told RFE/RL. "Conscripts and [mobilized soldiers] were driven to the barrier in Kolomna.
"I prayed all night, all day, and thank God they stopped," she said.
Another woman from the Moscow region, who asked to be called Yulia, told RFE/RL her father was a soldier in the regular military, while her brother was serving with Wagner.
Her brother, she said, told her that other Wagner fighters were not enthusiastic about getting into a gunfight with regular Russian troops.
"My brother wrote me: 'I would just lay down my arms in Moscow. I don't want to kill the citizens of my country,'" she said.
"Now he and his comrades do not know what will happen to them. One thing is certain: They will not be able to go to Belarus, following [Prigozhin's lead]," she said. "It seems to me that Wagner itself will stick around; it will just be controlled from Belarus."
