Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin surfaced in Belarus Tuesday, days after leading the disruptive but aborted armed uprising that rocked the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who played a key mediator role in the weekend crisis, confirmed that Mr. Prigozhin and thousands of mercenary fighters recruited by his shadowy company were staying in his country, beyond the reach — for now — of a rattled and angry Mr. Putin.
The fate of Mr. Prigozhin and his fighters is one of the still-unresolved issues following the head-spinning events of the weekend. Armed Wagner Group fighters occupied a military headquarters site in Rostov-on-Don and were advancing to just over 100 miles outside of Moscow before calling off the revolt.
The pugnacious 62-year-old Mr. Prigozhin was last seen in public when he left Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, issuing an 11-minute video defending his actions.
The mercenary chief denied he was seeking to overthrow Mr. Putin, saying he was instead expressing his unhappiness with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian military leadership’s handling of the 16-month war in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin denounced Mr. Prigozhin, a onetime political ally, and other top Wagner officials as traitors, but the Kremlin also has said Wagner fighters can join the regular Russian army or return to their homes without punishment. Mutiny charges against Mr. Prigozhin were dropped Tuesday, but Mr. Putin has darkly hinted the Wagner Group chief could still face financial corruption charges if he returns to Russia.
Anxious to ease fears about his hold on power, Mr. Putin in Moscow Tuesday praised a gathering of top security service officials, saying they had “essentially prevented a civil war.”
“The people and the army were not on the side of the mutineers,” Mr. Putin said, speaking to an audience outside the Kremlin that included the embattled Mr. Shoigu.
The Biden administration and NATO have taken a cautious, wait-and-see approach to the confusing events in Russia, while privately speculating that the chaos in the Kremlin and the potential loss of up to 25,000 Wagner Group troops from the front lines in Ukraine could provide a major break for Kyiv as its spring counteroffensive struggles to gain momentum against dug-in Russian forces in the south and east.
The Kremlin has claimed that Wagner Group fighters have agreed to turn in their weapons as part of the deal to call off the coup, but there was no sign that a surrender of arms had begun.
In Washington, the Pentagon announced Tuesday it would Ukraine with another $500 million worth of firepower like Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Stryker armored personnel carriers by again reaching into its own stockpile of military equipment, although Defense Department officials insisted the latest disbursement was not tied to the events of recent days.
“The security situation inside Russia is an internal Russian matter,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters. “We were not involved in this [and] we won’t get involved. We’re not at war with Russia and we don’t seek conflict with Russia.”
A role for Belarus
Mr. Lukashenko gave a lengthy account of his role in the negotiations that headed off a Russian civil war, but Minsk is now in the uncomfortable position of playing host to the man accused of leading an armed revolt against the Belarusian president’s one critical international ally.
The opposition Belarus news media site Verstka reported Monday that a camp that could accommodate 8,000 Wagner fighters — many of whom had been on the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine — was being built in the Belarusian town of Osipovichi, with more such camps coming. Osipovichi is 120 miles from the Ukraine-Belarus border.
Mr. Lukashenko denied the report.
“We offered an abandoned army facility to them. It has a fence and everything else,” Mr. Lukashenko told reporters at a military promotion ceremony in Minsk Tuesday, according to the official BelTA news service. “Feel free to set up tents and we will help you out how we can. They still have to make up their minds on what to do.”
He added that Mr. Prigozhin flew to Belarus after receiving “security guarantees” from Mr. Putin upon agreeing to call back his forces. On Tuesday morning, a private jet believed to belong to the mercenary leader flew from Rostov-on-Don to an air base southwest of Minsk, according to data from FlightRadar24, the Associated Press reported.
Mr. Lukashenko also told reporters Mr. Prigozhin should not expect Belarus to be a willing host if he tried to use the country as a recruiting post to build up his forces.
“We will not be able to stop anyone [from joining the Wagner Group] if you want to earn a lot of money,” Mr. Lukashenko said. “But you have to understand that every day you will sleep with death, and with an assault rifle as a pillow.”
Mr. Lukashenko, who recently agreed to house Russian tactical nuclear arms in his country, portrayed himself as playing a critical role in the weekend deal that avoided a full-scale civil war in Russia. He claimed he was able to reach Mr. Prigozhin by phone at the height of the crisis Saturday and helped persuade him to call off the revolt, at one point suggesting Belarus troops would be dispatched to support Mr. Putin in the event of full-blown civil war.
He confirmed that the Wagner Group chief was particularly unhappy with how Mr. Shoigu and his generals were conducting the Ukraine conflict and about a demand that Wagner mercenaries register to fight under the regular Russia army.
“He said, ‘We will advance to Moscow,’” Mr. Lukashenko said, recounting his Saturday phone call with Mr. Prigozhin. “‘We need justice. We’ve been fighting honestly.’ … I said, ‘I know it.’”
Tensions to come
But Mr. Lukashenko also contended the mercenary chief was facing pressure from his own recruits over how the fighting in Ukraine has played out.
“As far as I could tell, they strongly influenced Prigozhin himself,” Mr. Lukashenko said. “Yes, he acts like a hero, but he was under pressure and influence of those who were in command of assault units and had seen those deaths.”
Mr. Lukashenko expressed relief that a full-out coup was avoided, but said he, Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin were all at fault for failing to address the hostile relations between the Wagner Group and the Russian military brass.
“We failed to anticipate this situation,” the Belarus president said. “We let it get away from us. And then when it started spiraling out of control, we looked at it and thought that it would go away on its own.”
Mr. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus with a heavy hand for nearly three decades, but has faced growing isolation and criticism after winning a 2020 presidential election widely dismissed as fraudulent. Accepting the Wagner forces on Belarus soil for an indefinite period could pose a risk to his rule.
Belarusian opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled the country in the wake of the 2020 vote, said Wagner troops will threaten the country and its neighbors.
“Belarusians don’t welcome [the] war criminal Prigozhin,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “If Wagner sets up military bases on our territory, it will pose a new threat to our sovereignty and our neighbors.”
The war in neighboring Ukraine ground on despite the events in Russia: Ukrainian officials said at least four people were killed and 42 injured after two Russian rockets hit a popular pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk Tuesday.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at The Hague Tuesday it was still early to draw any conclusions about what Mr. Prigozhin and some of his forces might do or whether they all might end up in Belarus. Some Eastern European NATO leaders expressed alarm that thousands of Wagner Group fighters were apparently set to be posted close to their borders.
Said Polish President Andrzej Duda ahead of Tuesday’s NATO consultations in The Hague, “We see what is happening, the relocation of Russian forces in the form of the Wagner group to Belarus, and the head of the Wagner group going there, those are all very negative signals for us which we want to raise strongly with our allies.”
At the Pentagon, Gen. Ryder said there were no early signs that Russia’s political crisis had affected the fighting on the ground in Ukraine.
“There’s no indication they are willing to give up that fight and move back to Russia,” Gen. Ryder said.
— This article was based in part on wire service reports.
