Russia's war in Ukraine
Alexander Lukashenko said on June 27 that Yevgeny Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus under a deal he purportedly brokered between the Wagner chief and the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But on Thursday, Lukashenko had an updade, telling CNN's Matthew Chance at a press conference that Prigozhin was now in Russia.
Here's what Lukashenko said now and then.
June 27: “I see that Prigozhin is already flying on this plane. Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian state TV, days after Prigozhin launched and quickly abandoned a rebellion against the Russian military command.
Satellite imagery by global monitoring company BlackSky showed two planes linked to Prigozhin landed at a Belarusian airbase outside the country’s capital that morning.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 indicated the planes landed near Minsk at around 8 a.m. local time. Both planes had their transponders turned off before landing, obscuring their exact landing location.
It wasn't clear whether Prigozhin was actually on board the planes. Two sources -- a senior European intelligence official and a source familiar with Prigozhin’s planes -- confirmed at the time that the jets were linked to the Wagner boss but did not know if he was on board.
Prigozhin's supposed arrival in Belarus followed a deal that Lukashenko said he brokered, which would see the Wagner chief halt his mutiny and move to Belarus.
July 6: Lukashenko struck a very different tone on Thursday.
“In terms of Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in St Petersburg. Or maybe this morning he would travel to Moscow or elsewhere,” Lukashenko said. “But he is not on the territory of Belarus now.”
He said that Wagner’s whereabouts were “not a question for me,” because “this is a Russian company.”
Those comments will raise questions about the deal that was supposedly arranged, and about the fate of the Wagner leader whose dramatic but short-lived mutiny posed a serious threat to Putin's leadership.
Source: CNN
