 Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigazin said on June 26 that a one-day mutiny by his Wagner force had been intended not to overthrow Russia's government but to register a protest over what he said was its ineffectual conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. In his first public comments since ending the mutiny late on Saturday, Prigazin repeated his frequent claim that Wagner was the most effective fighting force in Russia and even the world, and that had put to shame the units that Moscow had sent into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. He said the way it had been able to seize the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don without bloodshed and to send an armed convoy to within 200 km of Moscow had been testament to the effectiveness of his fighters. We showed a masterclass, as it should have been on February 24, 2022. We did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and the legally elected government, he said in an 11-minute audio message released on the Telegram messaging app. Prigazin renewed an allegation so far unsupported by evidence that the Russian military had attacked a Wagner camp with missiles and then helicopters, killing about 30 of its men and said this had been the immediate trigger for what he called a march of justice. Wagner stopped its advance towards Moscow at the moment when it realized that it would have to confront waiting Russian troops and that blood would inevitably be shed, he said, reiterating an assertion he made on Saturday.