The president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas expressed his support to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, following the failed coup attempt by the Wagner group, The Middle East Monitor reported.
According to a statement released by the Kremlin on Sunday, the PA “initiated a phone call” between Putin and Abbas, during which the latter expressed his stance against the alleged coup attempt last week.
US ‘Furious’ over PA President Abbas’s Comments to Putin: Report
“The Palestinian leader expressed his full support for the actions of the Russian leadership to protect the constitutional order and law during the June 24 events”, the Kremlin statement said.
On June 24, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s primary mercenary company, the Wagner group, announced a march on Moscow against the Russian government and military leadership.
Prigozhin’s uprising and call for Russians to oppose the government came after months of tensions with the Russian Defense Ministry over an apparent lack of arms supplies and reinforcements to the group’s fighters in Ukraine.
The Wagner group members crossed the border into Russia and took control of the city of Rostov-on-Don, as the group sent an armed convoy on its way to Moscow in what looked to many like the start of a civil war.
The incident was short-lived, however, as Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko mediated a deal between the Russian government and the Wagner group, which allowed Prigozhin to withdraw into Belarus in return for Moscow dropping charges of treason and any measures against him.
(PC, MEMO)
