Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is no longer in Belarus, but has returned to Russia.
No one better to know the whereabouts of the opaque businessman than Lukashenko, who last month mediated to end an armed rebellion led by Prigozhin and, after an agreement, offered him his country as exile.
On June 27, Lukashenko said that, as agreed, Prigozhin had already arrived in Belarus.
But this Thursday, as reported by the state agency Belta, he assured that Prigozhin is now in Saint Petersburg, the center of his small business empire. And he did not rule out that he had also gone to Moscow.
Wagner "is a Russian company. So this question is not very clear to me. I have been informed that the fighters are in the camps," but not in Belarus. "As for Yevgueni Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg. Where is he this morning? In the morning he may have gone to Moscow," the Belarusian leader said when asked about the businessman and Wagner.
Lukashenko stressed that the offer he made to the private military company to install some of his mercenaries in Belarus still stands. The Minsk authorities have proposed to Wagner former Soviet-era military men, he added.
He also assured that he does not see any risk in this for Belarus and that he does not believe that they will take up arms against the country that welcomes them.
But he explained that this is a matter that has not yet been resolved and that the relocation of the Wagner Group units will depend on the decisions made by the group and by the Russian authorities.
According to Lukashenko, Prigozhin is "absolutely free" and Russian President Vladimir Putin is not going to "finish him off". He added that he will soon meet with the head of the Kremlin to discuss this matter.
On June 24, the Wagners took control of Rostov-on-Don, a southern Russian city of more than a million people.
Confronted for months with the Russian military commanders, Prigozhin demanded the dismissal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close Putin collaborator; and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valeri Guerásimov.
Then they marched in a column towards Moscow, a thousand kilometers to the north. They turned around 200 kilometers from the Russian capital, when Prigozhin and the Kremlin reached an agreement.
According to the pact, Russia will not prosecute the rebels, but their leader will go into exile in Belarus. Two days after the rebellion, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the mercenaries to join the Russian Army, lay down their weapons, or follow his leader to Belarus.
