Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced Saturday that Yevgeny Prigozhin will go to neighboring Belarus after both sides reached a deal to end the rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group, who advanced to just 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Moscow.

After the deal was struck, Prigozhin announced that he had decided to retreat to avoid “shedding Russian blood.”

The Kremlin also agreed to drop charges against Prigozhin of mounting an armed rebellion.

The government also said it would not prosecute Wagner fighters who took part, while those who did not join in were to be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian regular soldiers.

President Vladimir Putin had vowed earlier to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. In a televised speech to the nation, he called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

In allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Peskov said, Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”

Some observers said Putin's strongman image has taken a hit.

“Putin has been diminished for all time by this affair,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said on CNN.

Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city’s southern edge. About 3,000 Chechen soldiers were pulled from fighting in Ukraine and rushed there early Saturday, state television in Chechnya reported. 

Russian troops armed with machine guns put up checkpoints on Moscow's southern outskirts. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.

Prigozhin had demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigohzhin has long criticized in withering terms for his conduct during the 16-month-long war in Ukraine. On Friday, he accused forces under Shoigu's command of attacking Wagner camps and killing “a huge number of our comrades.”

If Putin were to agree to Shoigu’s ouster, it could be politically damaging for the president after he branded Prigozhin a backstabbing traitor.

The U.S. had intelligence that Prigozhin had been building up his forces near the border with Russia for some time. That conflicts with Prigozhin’s claim that his rebellion was a response to an attack on his camps in Ukraine on Friday by the Russian military.

In announcing the rebellion, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of attacking the Wagner camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery. He alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu in which they decided to destroy the military contractor.

The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

Early Saturday, Prigozhin’s private army appeared to control the military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city 660 miles (over 1,000 kilometers) south of Moscow, which runs Russian operations in Ukraine, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said.

Russian media reported that several helicopters and a military communications plane were downed by Wagner troops. Russia's Defense Ministry has not commented.

After the agreement de-escalated tensions, a video from Rostov-on-Don posted on Russian messaging app channels showed people cheering Wagner troops as they departed. Prigozhin was riding in an SUV followed by a large truck, and people greeted him and some ran to shake his hand. The regional governor later said that all of the troops had left the city.

Wagner troops and equipment also were in Lipetsk province, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) south of Moscow.

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