[Russia] - Putin Reveals Russia Paid $1Bln to Wagner Group in Past Year

INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
2023 in maintenance and incentive payments alone.He added that Wagner's owner, the U.S.-sanctioned company Concord, has earned another 80
fight in Ukraine.Wagner Group and Prigozhin were brought out of the shadows after Russia launched a full-scale military offensive in Ukraine
in 2022.Before that, Wagner engaged mostly covertly in global hotspots including Ukraine, Syria and several African countries, while
dollars and gold bars that Prigozhin had said were intended as salaries for his fighters.A St
Petersburg news outlet that published photographs of the money, as well as guns, fake passports and an unidentified white powder, deleted
the footage after the Kremlin reached an agreement for Prigozhin to abort his revolt.In exchange, President Vladimir Putin promised to drop
criminal mutiny charges against the catering magnate if he agreed to go into exile in neighboring Belarus.