Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is still in Russia and none of the mercenary group’s fighters have set up in Belarus, its president said yesterday, casting doubt on a Kremlin deal to end their insurrection.
“As far as Prigozhin is concerned, he is in Saint Petersburg... He is not in Belarus,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told reporters from foreign media outlets.
Speaking at the presidential palace in Minsk, Lukashenko said he knew “for sure” that Prigozhin was a free man, adding: “I spoke to him on the phone yesterday.”
Photo: AP
Lukashenko said that Wagner members had not set up a base in Belarus yet, despite an offer from the Kremlin for those who took part in the failed mutiny to do so.
“At the moment the question of their transfer and setup has not been decided,” Lukashenko said.
Prigozhin on June 23 launched a mutiny against Russia’s military leadership and sent an armed column toward Moscow in the biggest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
Some 24 hours later, the Kremlin said the crisis had been resolved thanks to mediation from Lukashenko, with Prigozhin due to depart for Belarus. Since then, Russian authorities have shut down or raided Prigozhin’s businesses.
Images broadcast by Russian media on Wednesday showed police entering Prigozhin’s residence, a vast and luxurious mansion with a helicopter parked in the grounds, reportedly on June 25.
The images showed police discovering wads of rubles and dollars, gold ingots, assault weapons, a closet full of wigs and several passports in Prigozhin’s name, but with photos of different people.
Lukashenko said he was “not worried or concerned” about hosting Wagner troops in his country and said they could instead be an asset.
“I do not think that Wagner will rise up and turn its guns against the Belarusian state,” he said.
“If we need to activate these units, we will activate them immediately and their experience will be very much appreciated,” he said.
In other news, Russia yesterday fired cruise missiles at a western Ukraine city far from the front line of the war, killing at least four people in an apartment building in what officials said was the heaviest attack on civilian areas of Lviv since Russian forces invaded Ukraine last year.
The nighttime attack destroyed the roof and the top two floors of a residential building, injuring 34 people.
Emergency crews with search dogs went through the rubble.
The youngest victim was 21 years old and the oldest was 95, Regional Military Administration head Maksym Kozytskyi said.
“This woman survived the Second World War, but unfortunately, she didn’t survive” Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kozytskyi said.
Debris and wrecked parked cars lined the street outside the building, which overlooks a small neighborhood park with swings and climbing frames amid trees.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said about 60 apartments and 50 vehicles in the area of strike were damaged.
US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink described the attack as “vicious.”
“Russia’s repeated attacks on civilians are absolutely horrifying,” she wrote on Twitter.
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