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After his failed revolt over the weekend, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to have arrived in Belarus. The Belarusian media reported this on Tuesday. “I see that Prigozhin is already on the plane,” Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko said during a meeting with agents, according to state media. “Yes, indeed, today he is in Belarus,” he added.

Bloggers also tracked Prigozhin’s flight using a tracking app and shared his arrival in the country on social media. Accordingly, the 62-year-old landed at an airport near Minsk after his private jet flew around Ukraine’s national territory. The Internet then joked that Prigozhin was very afraid of the Ukrainian air defense.

Perhaps the air defense of Ukraine is not the only thing Wagner’s boss fears. Prigozhin’s open confrontation with the Kremlin could endanger his life. “Prigozhin certainly thought that Putin would take his side and break with the army leadership – a misjudgment,” says political scientist Herfried Münkler to “Spiegel”.

However, the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin preferred to stick to the institutional state apparatus rather than deal with a “gambler” like Prigozhin. That could still be his downfall, Münkler believes.

If that happened, Lukashenko probably wouldn’t stand in the way of Russian intelligence, Münkler continued.

The military expert Ian Bremmer on the American TV channel CNBC also sees it that way. “From that moment on he is a walking dead man,” said the geopolitics expert, referring to Prigozhin’s exile in Belarus.

The Belarusian dictator himself indicated on Tuesday that these estimates could be correct.

So said the 69-year-old ruler in a video published by the presidential Telegram channel Pool Perwogo.

After Prigozhin’s rebellion broke down, Lukashenko had agreed to exile the mercenary boss and his men in Belarus.

Lukashenko is seen as the smiling third party in the dispute between Putin and his former confidant Prigozhin. The Belarusian autocrat did what the man in the Kremlin couldn’t: end the uprising without much bloodshed. According to experts, Lukashenko has not only put himself in a position against Putin, but he has also managed to improve his international reputation.

If the Wagner mercenaries actually go to Belarus and join the regular forces there, that would be another advantage Lukashenko gets from the inner-Russian conflict. His country could benefit from the combat experience of the Wagner mercenaries, he told state media. The experience of the commanders is “priceless”.

According to Kremlin spokesman Peskov, the Wagner fighters, who managed to take the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in mid-May after months of costly fighting, cost Putin dearly. Last year, Moscow paid just over a billion dollars (910 million euros) to the Wagner group. The money was spent between May 2022 and May 2023 on wages and bonuses for the Wagner fighters, the statement said. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the “heavy” military equipment of the Wagner mercenary unit will now be transferred to the Russian army.

On the sidelines of a minute’s silence for the Russian soldiers killed in the Wagner uprising, Putin thanked the security forces for preventing civil war. According to experts, the mere fact that Putin has allowed it to get this far and brought Russia to the brink of domestic dispute is a sign of his weakening within Russia’s power structure.

Even Lukashenko had no choice but to point to Putin. He criticized the political management in relation to the tensions between the mercenaries and the Russian army. “The situation eluded us and we thought it would resolve itself, but it didn’t,” Lukashenko said, according to the Belarusian state news agency Belta. He also acknowledged that the Belarusian army had been “combat-ready” during the uprising of Wagner mercenaries in Russia last weekend.

For Putin, these statements must come across as humiliating. Lukashenko, who was only able to stay in power with Russia’s help since the allegedly rigged elections in 2020, is chastising the Kremlin despot for his poor leadership and is now helping him out of trouble. That was unthinkable before last weekend.

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(t-online, cc)