Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin broke his silence Monday to claim his attempted coup against Russia was nothing more than a protest as some top Kremlin officials plotted to nix his mercenary army.

Prigozhin, who has reportedly accepted a deal to be exiled to Belarus to avoid criminal charges, defended his short-lived weekend march to Moscow as a necessity after 30 of his troops were allegedly killed by Russian fighters, CNN said.

“We started our march because of an injustice,” Prigozhin said in the 11-minute audio recording. “We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country.”

Prigozhin — who had been butting heads with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in their country’s war on Ukraine — said the ministry planned for his group to “cease to exist” starting July 1.

Wagner’s commander also reiterated the claim he made Saturday that he halted the insurrection to avoid bloodshed on Russian soil, despite reports that the rogue group killed up to 39 Russian pilots and crew members when it struck down six helicopters and a plane during the chaos.

“Overnight, we have walked 780 kilometers [about 484 miles], Prigozhin claimed of the group’s march toward the country’s capital. “Two hundred-something kilometers [about 125 miles] were left to Moscow. Not a single soldier on the ground was killed.

“We regret that we were forced [into] strikes on aircraft,” he said. “But these aircraft dropped bombs and launched missile strikes.”

As the mercenaries encroached further and further into Russia, a Wagner reconnaissance mission eventually concluded that a direct fight would result if they kept going, so he opted to end the “demonstration,” Prigozhin claimed.

“We felt that demonstrating what we were going to do was sufficient,” he said.

It was then that Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko “extended his hand and offered to find solutions for the further work of Wagner PMC in legal jurisdiction,” Prigozhin claimed.

The rebellion came as a boiling point in a feud between the Wagner chief and the Kremlin’s top military brass, with Prigozhin calling on Moscow to toss out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as part of his negotiations to stop the rebellion.

There is no sign that Moscow complied with Prigozhin’s demand, with Shoigu making his first public appearance since the uprising during a visit to Russian troops in Ukraine on Monday.

Prigozhin’s fate and the future of Wagner remain unclear. as many doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin will go through with the sweetheart deal extended to the mutinous troops.

While the troops were given the option to sign on with the Defense Ministry, Prigozhin initially asserted in the fresh audio that none of his mercenaries have done so.

“No one agreed to sign a contract with the Defense Ministry, since everyone knows very well from the current situation and their experience during the special military operation that this will lead to a complete loss of combat capability,” Prigozhin said.

But he later conceded that some had taken the deal, although he claimed it was only 1% to 2% of his forces.

Andrei Gurulev, a retired Russian general and current lawmaker who has rowed with Prigozhin, has said the Wagner chief and his right-hand-man, Dmitry Utkin, deserve “a bullet in the head.”

“I firmly believe that traitors in wartime must be executed,” Gurulev told The Associated Press.