Moving away from Putin’s speech for a second, Russian law enforcement appears to have conducted a raid on the Wagner office in St Petersburg, local news outlet Fontanka has reported.
“Law enforcers have entered PMC Wagner Centre on St Petersburg’s Zolnaya street,” the outlet reported.
Two buses with riot police and national guards have arrived at the building, it reports, entering together with people in plain clothing.
Fontanka posted about the raid on its Telegram channel on Saturday.
The news outlet claimed that “people in masks and with automatic rifles” were deployed near St Petersburg’s Blagoveshchensky bridge, where a hotel and a restaurant linked to Wagner boss Yevgeni Prigozhin are located.
Fontanka later published what is says is a video of law enforcement entering the Wagner Centre and photos of armed men near Prigozhin-linked properties.