The Western, Russian and Belarusian media reported this morning that the former head of the Wagner Group mercenaries, Evgeny Prigozhin, had departed aboard his private plane from St. Petersburg, where he had previously traveled from Rostov del Don, to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, according to the agreement reached on Saturday with the mediation of Belarus for cease armed uprising and demobilize the mercenaries. And, this afternoon, the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, confirmed the presence of Prigozhin in Belarus without providing further details.
«As promised, I told him that if he wants to change quarters for a while with us and so on, we will help him. Naturally, at their expense,” the Wagners, Lukashenko said, quoted by the Belarusian news agency Belta. In his words, “the leadership of the Belarusian Ministry of Defense is interested in the experience of Wagner’s fighters (…) the minister says that he would not mind having such a unit in the Belarusian Army and I agree, talk to them, I told him.
As for the accommodation of the Wagners in their territory, since those who decide to stay in Russia will have to join the Russian troops, the Belarusian leader said that “we have offered them an old abandoned barracks (…) it keeps the fence around its perimeter and everything else, they can set up tents, we can help them with whatever it takes”. Lukashenko reported that the bulk of the mercenaries are currently in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Lugansk. He warned that in his country “there will be no Wagner recruiting centers.” He also stressed that mercenaries will not be used in Belarus to protect tactical nuclear weapons sent by Russia.
Hours earlier, in a meeting with government officials, the Belarusian head of state stated that he interceded with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, so that he would not give an order to liquidate Prigozhin. «I told Putin: he can be killed, it is not a problem. Whether it was the first attempt or the second, but I advised him not to do it »and he referred to the« security guarantees »obtained within the framework of the agreement to stop the riot.
high alert
During that meeting, which was also attended by high-ranking military personnel, he ordered, seeing what happened in Russia, to put the Belarusian troops on high alert, suggesting that the West could use any possible weakness of Russia and Belarus to its advantage. He warned that “if russia collapses we will all die». In his opinion, “the worst part of all this is that if there is a crisis, the West could instantly take advantage of it.” For this reason, in his opinion, after the mercenaries’ coup “no one here is a hero, neither Putin nor Prigozhin nor I (…) we thought that the situation would resolve itself and it did not”, words that were not They have liked nothing in Moscow.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) definitively decided to drop all charges, including “treason”, the most serious
Despite the initial commitment to decriminalize Prigozhin and his fighters on sedition charges, on Monday there were still doubts in Moscow about it. But today they were cleared and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) finally decided to drop all charges, including the most serious “treason”. However, Putin has denounced during a meeting with military commanders that “between May 2022 and May 2023, from the state coffers 86.262 million rubles was transferred (about 900 million euros) to the Wagner group (…) the State has fully financed them ». “I hope that during these operations no one has stolen or, so to speak, has stolen little. Of course, we will take care of checking it, “he added. At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that “preparations are already underway for the transfer of heavy military equipment from the Wagner group to active units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”
