Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who last month brokered a deal to end an armed mutiny in Russia, said that Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was no longer in Belarus
Lukashenko helped broker a deal to end last month's mutiny, the gravest challenge to Putin in his 23 years in power, under which Prigozhin was supposed to stand down his mercenaries and move to Belarus in exchange for Putin dropping charges.
Prigozhin "is not on the territory of Belarus," Lukashenko told reporters in Minsk's vast Independence Palace. "He is in Petersburg ... perhaps he went to Moscow this morning."Asked about earlier comments suggesting Putin had wanted toas the mutiny unfolded, Lukashenko said some in the Kremlin had wanted this, but that it would have unleashed civil war.
The 68-year-old Belarusian leader dismissed a question about whether Putin had been weakened by the crisis, but said he did not want to talk about the motivation behind the mutiny. He said he had told Prigozhin, using the diminutive of his first name, Zhenya, that "Putin and I will defend Moscow".Lukashenko said Putin had known Prigozhin for 30 years, and that Wagner had been founded by Russia's GRU military intelligence service and was Russia's best fighting force.
Wagner spearheaded the attritional nine-month battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, but Prigozhin repeatedly accused the top brass of corruption and incompetence and cast the June 24 "march of justice" on Moscow as a protest against them.a fierce attack on Prigozhin and said an investigation was still being pursued.
Putin told Asian leaders this week that the episode had shown Russian society to be more united than ever."No, we do not follow his movements, we have neither the ability nor the desire to do so," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, nevertheless confirming that Prigozhin's departure for Belarus was one condition of the deal.
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