Wagner chief heads into Belarus exile, NATO vows to protect allies

Belarus welcomed the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin into exile on Tuesday following an aborted rebellion, as NATO warned it was ready to defend against "Moscow or Minsk".

As the fallout unfolded from Prigozhin's brief mutiny -- widely seen as the biggest threat to Kremlin authority in decades -- Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to shore up his authority by thanking regular troops for averting a civil war.

But as Moscow announced preparations to disarm Wagner fighters, Putin's arch foe, jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, launched a stinging attack on the president in his first comments since the aborted mutiny by the paramilitaries.

"There is no bigger threat to Russia than Putin's regime," Navalny said on social media.

"Putin's regime is so dangerous to the country that even its inevitable demise will create the threat of civil war," he wrote.

In the Hague, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said it was still too early to draw conclusions from the move to Belarus of Prigozhin and, likely, some of his forces, but he vowed that the alliance was ready to defend its members.

"What is absolutely clear is that we have sent a clear message to Moscow and to Minsk that NATO is there to protect every ally and every inch of NATO territory," Stoltenberg said. 

Putin's supporters, however, insisted that his rule was not weakened by the revolt.

Asked whether Putin's power was diminished by the sight of Wagner's rebel mercenaries seizing a military HQ, advancing on Moscow and shooting down military aircraft along the way, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused political commentators of exaggerating, adding that: "We don't agree."

Putin himself attempted to portray the dramatic events at the...