Foreign Minister João Gomes Cravinho said this Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “sows the wind” and will therefore “reap storms” such as the uprising movements in Russia against the military command. .
“As for the latest developments in Russia, we know that whoever sows the wind reaps a whirlwind, and President Putin sows the wind,” the head of Portuguese diplomacy said.
Speaking to Portuguese journalists at the entrance to a meeting with his EU counterparts, João Gomes Cravinho added that Putin “did it by promoting a private mercenary army that proved capable of challenging the Russian armed forces” and “did it also by illegally invading Ukraine “.
“Our goal is to continue to support Ukraine so that Ukraine determines the conditions for peace, which is necessary,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs emphasized.
The head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, halted the movement of rebels in Russia against military commanders less than 24 hours after occupying Rostov, a key city in the south of the country for the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the group’s actions a riot, saying it was a “mortal threat” to the Russian state and a betrayal to ensure there would be no “civil war”.
Late in the afternoon on Saturday, when the Wagner forces were reported to have advanced about 200 kilometers from Moscow, Prigozhin said he had negotiated an agreement with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Earlier, the head of the paramilitary group accused the Russian army of attacking its mercenary camps, resulting in “a very high number of casualties,” accusations that reveal deep tensions within Moscow’s forces over the offensive in Ukraine.