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Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has not relocated to Belarus and continues to move freely around Russia, the Belarusian president has said, despite a peace deal with Moscow under which he had agreed to move.
Prigozhin’s Wagner Group fighters had also not transferred to Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko said. He claimed Prigozhin had been in St Petersburg and was unlikely to get “whacked”, suggesting that Prigozhin is safe from Russian president Vladimir Putin’s security services.
The relocation of the Russian armed group to Belarus was part of a peace deal brokered by Lukashenko between Prigozhin and the Kremlin after the Wagner boss led an aborted armed uprising against Moscow in late June, infuriating Putin.
“With regards [to] Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in St Petersburg,” Lukashenko said. “Where is he this morning? Maybe this morning he went to Moscow . . . ” the Belarusian leader said, adding that Prigozhin was neither jailed nor in danger.
“What’s going to happen to him next? Well, all kinds of things happen in life. But if you think that Putin is so malicious and vindictive that he will be ‘whacked’ tomorrow . . . No, that’s not going to happen,” Lukashenko said.
According to the deal that ended Prigozhin’s uprising — and led the warlord to pull back the men and tanks he had sent marching on Moscow on June 22 — Wagner fighters were meant to join the Russian army, go home, or follow Prigozhin into exile in Belarus.
A week earlier, Lukashenko said that Prigozhin had appeared in Belarus, and a Wagner-affiliated social media channel had shared pictures of tent camps being constructed in the country.
But the warlord’s plane has since flown several times from Belarus to Moscow and St Petersburg and back again, Flightradar24 data shows, raising questions over whether Prigozhin is sticking to the deal.
In a press conference on Thursday, Lukashenko said that the Wagner fighters were still in their base camps near the front line in Ukraine. The camps are believed to be in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, an area under Russian control since 2014. At the time of his abortive uprising, Prigozhin said the men numbered 25,000.
“Will they end up in Belarus or not, and in what quantity — we’ll figure this out in the near future,” Lukashenko said, adding that he planned to meet Putin soon to discuss Wagner and how the group would function in future.
Despite being accused of treachery by Putin on the day of the insurrection, the Wagner Group has continued to recruit troops for the war in Ukraine according to its job adverts on the Telegram messaging app.
The group also appears to have continued some of its activities in Africa, where it functions as a private military company, contracted by local governments.
Lukashenko said that camps were not being set up for the Wagner fighters. “We are not erecting new camps. We offered them several former military camps, which were used back in wartime,” he added.
If Wagner did relocate to Belarus, Lukashenko said, it would not pose risks to Minsk.
“I am not at all concerned or bothered that we will have a certain number of these fighters stationed,” Lukashenko said. “I do not think that Wagner will rebel and turn its guns against the Belarusian authorities . . . Anything may happen in life, but I do not see this on the cards today.”
Instead, he said, the fighters could be deployed to provide security for the country. “We will have them stationed under certain conditions. The main condition is that if we need to activate this unit for national defence, it will be activated immediately. And their experience will be in demand.”