The mercenary chief Yevgeny V. Prigozhin is in Russia and is a “free man” regardless of staging a riot towards Moscow’s army management, the chief of Belarus mentioned on Thursday, deepening the thriller of the place Mr. Prigozhin and his Wagner group stand and what’s going to grow to be of them.
President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus informed reporters that Mr. Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg, Russia, as of Thursday morning, after which “perhaps he went to Moscow, perhaps elsewhere, however he isn’t on the territory of Belarus.”
It was Mr. Lukashenko who brokered a deal between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Prigozhin to finish the transient mutiny. He mentioned days later that the Wagner chief had gone to Belarus, although it isn’t clear whether or not that truly occurred.
Mr. Prigozhin is at liberty for now, Mr. Lukashenko mentioned, although he conceded that he “didn’t know what would occur later,” and he disregarded the concept that Mr. Putin would merely have Mr. Prigozhin, till not too long ago an important ally, killed.
“In case you assume that Putin is so malicious and vindictive that he’ll kill Prigozhin tomorrow — no, this is not going to occur,” he mentioned.
If Mr. Prigozhin — vilified as a traitor in state media — is, in actual fact, free and in Russia lower than two weeks after staging what the Kremlin known as an tried coup, it might be one of many extra perplexing twists in a narrative stuffed with them. On Wednesday, a outstanding current-affairs tv present broadcast video of what it claimed was a police search of his opulent mansion in St. Petersburg, the place it mentioned massive quantities of money, firearms, passports, wigs and medicines had been discovered. A spokesman for Mr. Prigozhin denied that the home was his.
Some Russian information retailers reported that Mr. Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg on Wednesday or Thursday. A Pentagon official, talking on situation of anonymity to debate delicate intelligence, mentioned that the Wagner chief had been in Russia for a lot of the time because the mutiny, however the official mentioned it was not clear whether or not he had been in Belarus, partly as a result of Mr. Prigozhin apparently makes use of physique doubles to disguise his actions.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, deflected a query about Mr. Prigozhin’s whereabouts, saying that the federal government had “neither the flexibility nor the need” to trace his actions.
In a uncommon information convention with native and international journalists on the marbled presidential palace in Minsk, Mr. Lukashenko, all the time desirous to be seen as a world statesman, clearly loved the limelight solid on him by essentially the most dramatic problem to Mr. Putin’s authority in his 23 years in energy. However days after providing a haven to Wagner fighters and their chief in his nation, Mr. Lukashenko gave no readability about the place they might go or what position they might play.
Whereas Mr. Lukashenko, an autocrat who has dominated his nation for 29 years, continued to boast of his mediation and peacemaking, he additionally made clear his deference, even subservience, to Russia and Mr. Putin, whom he referred to a number of instances as “huge brother.”
“The primary query of the place Wagner can be deployed and what’s going to it do — it doesn’t rely on me; it will depend on the management of Russia,” he mentioned. He added that he had spoken to Mr. Prigozhin on Wednesday, and that Wagner would proceed to “fulfill its duties to Russia for so long as it could actually,” although he didn’t elaborate.
Mr. Putin has lengthy sought to to tug Belarus deeper into the Russian political, financial and army orbits. For years, Mr. Lukashenko, whose energy relies upon closely on managing that relationship, did properly sufficient to keep up some independence and even tried to construct commerce ties to the West.
However that pale after Mr. Putin helped him brutally suppress opposition protests in 2020, beginning a interval of elevated repression wherein critics of the federal government had been jailed or fled into exile. Below Western sanctions and more and more handled as a world pariah, Belarus — with 9 million individuals — has turned ever extra reliant on Russia, — with a inhabitants of 143 million — for financial support, vitality, high-tech imports and diplomatic help.
In February, when Mr. Putin thanked him for touring to Moscow for a gathering, Mr. Lukashenko, in a comment caught by tv cameras, replied: “As if I couldn’t agree.”
A 12 months earlier, Mr. Lukashenko had allowed Mr. Putin to launch one thrust of his invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian soil, and this 12 months, he allowed Russia to station nuclear-armed short-range missiles there. However he has up to now resisted efforts to tug Belarus’s army instantly into the struggle.
Through the Wagner rebellion, Mr. Lukashenko performed go-between, talking with Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin. He later boasted that he had made peace between them, persuading the Wagner chief to face down and the Russian president “to not do something rash,” like having Mr. Prigozhin killed or the mutiny crushed in bloody vogue. His claims couldn’t be verified.
Wagner’s mercenaries have made up a few of the most brutal and efficient models combating in Ukraine for Russia, and took the lead in capturing the town of Bakhmut after an extended and really brutal battle. However Mr. Putin and his authorities have opted to finish Wagner’s independence, requiring its fighters in Ukraine to signal contracts with the Ministry of Protection — a principal explanation for Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny.
Mr. Lukashenko mentioned that any Wagner models in Belarus might be known as upon to defend the nation, and that the group’s settlement to battle for Belarus within the occasion of a struggle was the primary situation for granting it permission to relocate to the nation.
“Their expertise can be in excessive demand,” he mentioned.
Mr. Lukashenko additionally praised the group and signaled that no less than a few of Wagner’s combating drive may keep intact.
He has positioned himself as an influence dealer who had helped resolve a disaster, and never for the primary time. Early in his information convention on Thursday in an ornate, high-ceiling assembly room, he reminded the dozen or so journalists current that it was in the identical room that he had performed host to the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine for peace talks in 2015.
In 2014, Russia had seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, and proxy forces backed by Moscow began a separatist struggle in Ukraine’s jap Donbas area — which Russia now claims as its personal. An settlement reached in 2015 in Minsk laid out steps — largely ignored within the following years — that had been supposed to provide an enduring peace, and the combating in Donbas, whereas diminished, didn’t cease.
Within the first weeks of the full-scale invasion final 12 months, Mr. Lukashenko invited delegations from Kyiv and Moscow to Belarus however they discovered no widespread floor for continued talks, a lot much less peace.
By talking with a small group of reporters on the Independence Palace on Thursday, Mr. Lukashenko could also be hoping to ascertain a measure of independence from his benefactors in Moscow, and credibility with the West, whereas presumably getting a lift at house, with a populace extra keen on peace than becoming a member of Mr. Putin’s struggle in Ukraine.
It additionally offered a patina of normalcy in a rustic the place unbiased journalism is successfully criminalized. Accreditation for Western journalists is uncommon and might typically be obtained solely when Mr. Lukashenko deems it in his curiosity to talk to them.
Their presence — and their curiosity in Mr. Lukashenko’s position within the negotiations between Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin — was the topic of nationwide information in Belarus, the place the state-controlled media commonly tout the president’s worldwide stature.
Regardless of the formality of the scene, the place white-gloved attendants poured tea, Mr. Lukashenko, who had a seating chart with all of the journalists current, behaved largely informally, addressing many reporters by title and cracking jokes.
These from Belarus state media posed pleasant questions, asking how Belarusian society ought to put together to resist info campaigns organized by the U.S. Division of State or prompting him to discuss the federal government’s efforts to deliver youngsters from Russian-occupied Ukraine to summer time camps in Belarus — which Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating as a attainable struggle crime.
Mr. Lukashenko largely dodged far more durable questions from international journalists, like whether or not he regretted permitting Russia to invade from Belarus. As a substitute, he positioned the blame for the invasion on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
He additionally ridiculed journalists who requested about home repression, notably lately. Viasna, a human rights group whose Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder, Ales Bialatski, is behind bars in Belarus, has counted virtually 1,500 political prisoners.
Earlier than the 2020 election, Mr. Lukashenko’s authorities imprisoned potential candidates to run towards him or barred them from showing on the poll. After the federal government claimed that Mr. Lukashenko had gained 81 p.c of the vote, opponents cried fraud, and mass protests started.
Belarusian information retailers that coated the demonstrations have been criminalized as “extremist” and simply following them or sharing their supplies on social media may end up in jail time.
Regardless of its small inhabitants, Belarus ranks fifth on the earth within the variety of jailed journalists, in accordance with the Committee to Shield Journalists. The Affiliation of Belarusian Journalists, itself banned as an “extremist” group, counts 33 journalists being held.
When requested on Thursday why a number one jailed opposition determine, Sergei Tikhanovsky, had not been heard from in months or allowed entry to his lawyer, the Belarusian chief appeared to detect his surname, as if it had been unfamiliar to him.
Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting from Berlin, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
