The Wagner mercenary group is reportedly prepared to relocate to Belarus as part of the deal it struck with Russia following its aborted mutiny against Moscow’s leadership, a senior commander of the group said.
But the exact whereabouts of the group and its leader, Yevgeny Prighozin, remain a mystery.
After the short-lived rebellion on June 23 and 24, Prigozhin worked out a deal that allowed his men to either move to Belarus, join Russia’s military, or go home.
However, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who helped broker the deal between the mercenary group and Moscow, said Thursday that Prigozhin and thousands of his men were still in Russia, calling into question how the deal with be implemented.
Prigozhin was reportedly allowed to return to St. Petersburg to retrieve a massive arsenal of guns that were seized by Russia’s FSB, days after reclaiming $100 million seized last during the short-lived insurrection.
Where he went after his face-to-face at the FSB building was unknown.
On Friday, an adviser to the Belarus defense minister said the unused military camp Lukashenko offered the Wagner group remained empty and the mercenaries have yet to even visit the camp.
“They have not come, they have not looked,” Maj. Gen. Leonid Kasinsky said.
Anton Yelizarov, a senior commander in the Wagner Group, said on Telegram Saturday that the fighters were taking a vacation until August — per Prigozhin’s orders — before moving to Belarus.
“We have to prepare bases, training grounds, coordinate with local governments and administrations, organize interaction with the law enforcement agencies of Belarus and establish logistics,” he was quoted as saying on the “Yevgeny Prigozhin on Telegram” channel.
Yelizarov added that there have been no attempts by Moscow to “hit” the mercenary group since the mutiny and said that Russian state media’s recent attacks on Prigozhin were attempts to drive a wedge between him and his men.
The senior commander said the media campaign wouldn’t damage the relationship between the mercenary force and its leader, because Prigozhin created and molded the group “when the state did not need us.”
Yelizarov went on to compare Prigozhin and his men to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
In the weeks since the Wagner rebellion, Prigozhin has gone silent on his previously active Telegram channel with his last post coming June 26, when he backed his fighters’ decision to move on Moscow.
Russian state TV broadcast footage that appears to be shot during law enforcement raids on Prigozhin’s office in St. Petersburg and one of his “palaces,” with the video showing boxes full of cash in a luxury home.
With Post Wires.