Wagner chief ‘may still be in Russia with political immunity’ despite ‘exile’
Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin is still in Russia despite claims by Alexander Lukashenko that he is in exile in Belarus, reports have suggested.
Express.co.uk has analysed reports from a range of pro-Russian Telegram channels, as well as underground Belarusian monitoring groups, which together suggest that despite widespread intimations of the Wagner chief’s exile in Belarus, he has, in fact, been given “political immunity”.
This immunity, given to him by the Kremlin allows him to remain in St Petersburg until July 1, the northwestern Russian city where the private military company headquarters is located.
Analysis of Prigozhin’s private jet’s movements suggests that he was in Belarus for just 14 hours and 59 minutes, on June 27, during which time he may have met with Lukashenko in the President’s residence at Zaslauskaye reservoir, just outside Minsk, where the Belarusian dictator usually carries out “non-public negotiations”.
Prigozhin is reported to have been “given time to close all cases in Russia and take his property”, according to a source who spoke with VChK-OGPU, a Telegram channel with alleged access to the Kremlin and more than 750,000 followers.
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The source claimed that the “search and seizure of assets will begin on July 1st”.
In the meantime, Wagner PMC is “preparing to export all available cash funds to Africa and Belarus in the near future”, they added.
Another source told the same Telegram channel on Friday morning (June 30) that Prigozhin has been given “political immunity” by the Kremlin, allowing him to travel relatively freely around Russia and Belarus until Saturday (July 1).
These claims align with the movements of Prigozhin’s business jet, the Embraer Legacy 600 (registration number RA-02795), which has spent only a brief period of time in Belarus and a significant amount of time in St Petersburg.
On Sunday, Prigozhin’s jet flew a round-trip from St Petersburg to Rostov-on-Don, from where the Wagner group had staged their coup last Saturday (June 24), and back again.
The radar on board was mysteriously switched off when it entered Rostov Oblast airspace during the day but it was turned back on during its return trip in the evening.
Two days later, on June 27, at 7.40am local time, the jet landed at Machulishchy military airfield outside the Belarusian capital of Minsk and stayed there for nearly 15 hours.
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During these hours, Lukashenko confirmed that Prigozhin was in Belarus when speaking to reporters. He said: “Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today.”
Lukashenko then spent roughly five hours in his residence by the Zaslauskaye reservoir, where he usually carries out non-public negotiations, from 5pm to 10pm local time.
Less than 45 minutes after he is believed to have left his residence, Prigozhin’s plane then flew to Moscow, to the Sheremetyevo airport, and then immediately onto St. Petersburg, according to the Belarusian Hajun Project.
A second business jet (RA-02878), which had followed Prigozhin’s plane to Belarus earlier that day, immediately took off afterwards and landed later in St. Petersburg.
It has not been confirmed whether Prigozhin was on his private plane but the coalescence of these various reports suggest that he may have been.
Information on the deal brokered between Alexander Lukashenko, on behalf of Vladimir Putin, and Prigozhin last weekend to put a stop to the insurgency is full of “many unknowns”, according to another Telegram channel BRIEF.
What will happen to the Wagner operations in Africa, particularly in Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR), where they are integral to government operations in those countries, also remains unclear.
But the purported permission given to Prigozhin to empty his properties and relocate his cash assets suggest that, irrespective of his future role with Wagner, the negotiations between the leaders afforded space to the private military company to continue their operations outside of Ukraine.
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