Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tours the new factory Concord, which supplies pre-prepared meals to schools with Yevgeny Prigozhin. September 20, 2010.
Is it possible Yevgeny Prigozhin could rely on Aleksandr Lukashenko’s word that he and his Wagner PMC fellows will have a safe haven in Belarus? Katia Glod examines the situation in Foreign Policy, writing:
Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans are extremely unclear: Nobody can be sure whether he and his mercenaries will choose to take up Aleksandr Lukashenko’s offer of a safe haven in Belarus. But it is certainly plausible that he will do so, at least for a while.
The Belarusian dictator is presenting his role in brokering an accord between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin as a triumph of his personal diplomacy. But in truth, the presence of the warlord in Belarus is dangerous for Lukashenko. It further ties Belarus to a war that is unpopular with most citizens and has the potential to destabilize not only Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin, but also the foundations of his regime.
On June 23-24, the Russian Wagner mercenary group that has fought fierce battles in eastern Ukraine mutinied, demanding that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov be “handed over” to them. Instigated by Prigozhin—their leader, a Russian oligarch—the Wagner troops crossed the Ukrainian border and swiftly “marched” through the Russian cities of Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, stopping some 120 miles short of Moscow.
At that time, Lukashenko reportedly negotiated a deal with Prigozhin over the phone, whereby Prigozhin would end the rebellion in exchange for his troops and himself being granted safe passage into exile and “legal jurisdiction for work” in Belarus.
Since then, independent monitors have spotted Prigozhin’s jet twice in Belarus, on June 27 and July 1, though each time it is reported that he returned to Moscow after. Indeed, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov later confirmed that Putin had a three-hour meeting with Prigozhin and 34 Wagner commanders in Moscow on June 29. Two days before that, on June 27, Lukashenko reportedly spent five hours in his residence on a lake just outside of Minsk, known as a venue for holding private and secretive meetings by Lukashenko and his family members. Just 39 minutes after Lukashenko had left the residence, Prigozhin’s jet took off from an airfield near Minsk.
Prigozhin himself, however, has not been seen in Belarus, and neither have the Wagner troops. At the same time, satellite images have revealed the construction of a large military camp in eastern Belarus, which, many speculated, might be being built for the Wagner troops. The independent monitors were also told by reliable sources that some 200 Wagnerites had been deployed to the Losvida military field, near Vitebsk in northern Belarus. On July 6, however, Lukashenko said at a press conference that Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg, Russia, while the Wagner troops were also in Russia, in “their permanent camps to which they had withdrawn after leaving the front line.”
If anyone emerged victorious out of this bizarre imbroglio, at least on the face of it, it was Lukashenko. He reveled in presenting himself as capable of sorting out squabbles within the Russian elites, while also humiliating the Russian president: “I suggested to Putin not to rush … I said, ‘let’s talk to Prigozhin and his commanders’.” He boasted to journalists that Prigozhin would not answer Putin’s phone calls but did respond to his own.
It is doubtful, however, that Lukashenko had the political clout to genuinely mediate at the top level in Russia. Following his rigging of the 2020 presidential election, Lukashenko has lost legitimacy both at home and internationally and stayed in power only thanks to the Kremlin’s political and economic backing.
Read more here.
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