Back from exile? – Lukashenko: Prigozhin is not in Belarus

Despite an agreement to leave the country with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the mutinous Prigozhin may have returned. “As for Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg. He is not on the territory of Belarus,” Lukashenko told the press.

In June, Prigozhin, who was from St. Petersburg, led a revolt of his mercenaries and sent them on what he called the “March of Justice” to Moscow. He broke off the mutiny a few hundred kilometers from the Russian capital. On June 27, a few days after the mercenary mutiny, Lukashenko stated that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus.

“Don’t worry” about Wagner fighters in Belarus
The fighters of the Russian mercenaries are in their permanent camps, Lukashenko said Thursday. His offer still stands that some of them can be stationed in Belarus after their mutiny.

“I am not at all afraid that we will have a certain number of fighters stationed here. If they need to be deployed, we will deploy them immediately. All the knowledge they gained at the front will be taken into account and used for training,” the ruler said.

But not go into exile?
According to Lukashenko, he mediated between Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin assured Prigozhin and his fighters that they would go unpunished and go into exile in Belarus.

Prigozhin’s uprising was directed against the Russian military leadership, whom he had long accused of incompetence in the war against Ukraine. Wagner’s mercenaries were an important mainstay of the Russian military, especially in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.