The Russian authorities dropped an investigation into Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, over charges that he led a brief armed rebellion over the weekend, and the group is preparing to hand over military equipment to the Russian Army, state media reported on Tuesday.

The two nearly simultaneous announcements were part of an effort by the Kremlin to move on from the stunning, if short-lived, mutiny by Prigozhin’s forces on Saturday. But they left many unanswered questions.

The mercenary leader’s whereabouts remained unclear a day after he denied, in an audio message posted on Monday, that his mutiny had been an attempt to seize power in Russia. In the message, he said that the action had instead been a protest against the way Russia’s senior military leaders have handled the war in Ukraine.

The Russian domestic intelligence agency said on Tuesday that it was dropping “armed mutiny” criminal charges against Yevgeny V. Prigozhin and members of his Wagner force, while the Russian defence ministry announced that the mercenary group’s fighters were preparing to hand over military equipment to the army.

An amnesty for Wagner fighters who participated in the mutiny was part of a deal brokered on Saturday between Prigozhin and President Vladimir V. Putin that brought an end to the rebellion, in which Wagner troops seized a military installation in southern Russia and marched to within 201km of Moscow. The Wagner forces also shot down several Russian aircraft, leading to the deaths of an undisclosed number of airmen whom Putin has praised as “fallen hero pilots”.

But the announcement by the intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, made clear that Prigozhin and his associates would not face criminal punishment for the violence.

“It was established that its participants stopped their actions directly aimed at committing a crime on June 24,” the FSB said in a statement on Tuesday. “Taking into account these and other circumstances of value to the investigation, the investigative agency resolved on June 27 to terminate the criminal case.”

At the same time, the Russian defence ministry announced that Wagner troops were preparing to hand over the group’s “heavy hardware” to the army, an apparent reference to military equipment. The announcements appeared to be an effort to address one of the questions that has lingered since the weekend mutiny.

New York Times News Service