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New twist in the Prigozhin saga. The head of Wagner’s private army who staged a rebellion against the Kremlin’s military leadership last month has returned to Russia, according to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Yevgeny Prigozhin “is in St. Petersburg,” Lukashenko told reporters in Minsk on Thursday, according to state news agency Belta. The leader of the mercenaries may have also gone to Moscow, the president added.
Lukashenko said last week that Prigozhin was in Belarus just days after he agreed to pull his mercenaries away from a June 24 march on Moscow that had turned into the biggest threat to President Vladimir Putin’s Russian government for nearly a year. quarter century. Wagner’s founder has not appeared in public since the end of the uprising.
The Kremlin is not following Prigozhin’s whereabouts and has no intention of doing so, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, according to news service Interfax.
Lukashenko: Prigozhin is in Russia, not Belarus
Under a deal brokered by Lukashenko, Putin agreed to allow Prigozhin to go to Belarus, as well as any Wagner fighters who wanted to join him, and to drop a criminal investigation against them for armed mutiny.