Rebellious Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has demanded in a video that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov come to meet him in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

Mr Prigozhin said in one video posted on social media by his own press service that he was now at the headquarters of the Southern Military District, which is in Rostov-on-Don.

In another video, posted by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel “Razgruzka Wagnera” (“Wagner’s combat vest”), he was seen sitting between two senior generals, one of them Army Lieutenant-General Vladimir Alekseyev, who had earlier issued a video urging Mr Prigozhin to reconsider his declared drive to oust the top brass.

“We have arrived here, we want to receive the chief of the general staff and Shoigu,” Mr Prigozhin said on the video.

“Unless they come, we’ll be here, we’ll blockade the city of Rostov and head for Moscow.”

Earlier Mr Prigozhin appeared to suggest he had sent an armed convoy on a 1,200-kilometre charge towards Moscow in an unlikely attempt to topple the country’s military leadership.

Russian local officials said a military convoy was on the main motorway linking the southern part of European Russia, bordering Ukraine, with Moscow, and warned residents to avoid it.

Russian authorities have accused Mr Prigozhin of staging an armed mutiny after he alleged, without providing evidence, that the military leadership had killed a huge number of his fighters in an air strike, and vowed to punish them.

The FSB domestic security service said it had opened a criminal case against Mr Prigozhin for armed mutiny, a crime punishable with a jail term of up to 20 years.

The dramatic turn of events, with many details unclear, looked like the biggest domestic crisis President Vladimir Putin has faced since he ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — something he called a “special military operation” — in February last year.

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