General Sergei Surovikin, the deputy commander of Russia’s Ukraine campaign, encouraged the Wagner private militia soldiers on Friday to abandon their hostility to the military leadership and return to their posts.

“I urge you to stop,” he urged in a video message uploaded on Telegram. “The enemy is simply waiting for our country’s internal political situation to deteriorate.”

Earlier on Friday, the FSB security service had said comments by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin vowing to avenge Moscow’s purported killing of thousands of his fighters amounted to a call to start an armed civil conflict, the Interfax news agency reported. It urged Wagner fighters to arrest him.