No Wagner group here: riddles grow as Belarus shows an empty base

Along the highway, past an evergreen forest and behind a rusty gate, hundreds of recently pitched tents, filled with bunk beds made from slabs of fragrant pine wood, are ready for use in central Belarus.

The 300 tents, set up in recent days on a derelict Soviet-era military plot and housing 5,000 soldiers, may have attracted little attention other than the timing. They appeared just after the Russian Wagner paramilitary group staged a mutiny against the Kremlin military leadership, and after Belarusian autocratic leader Aleksandr G. Lukashenko said an abandoned military base in his country would contain Wagner fighters. can accommodate.

But on Friday, Belarusian officials gave foreign journalists a tour of the unoccupied camp to make it clear that there were no Wagner fighters, or anywhere near them — a most unusual display of apparent openness that only added to the many unanswered questions. about the uprising and its aftermath.

“We have nothing to hide,” said Major General Leonid V. Kasinsky, an assistant to the Belarusian defense minister responsible for ideology, as he showed reporters around the base. “No one from Wagner came here,” he added.

After the 36-hour mutiny ended on June 24 without a major armed clash, Mr. Lukashenko took credit for brokering the resolution, and he seemed to be outlining the outline of a deal: Wagner leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin would go to Belarus, Russian authorities would not prosecute him, and Wagner fighters in Ukraine who did not want to be included in the Russian army, as required by a new law, could also be welcome there.

Mr Lukashenko said last week that Wagner might be using an old Belarusian military base, but despite the speculation sparked by the new tents, it was not clear he meant this one, in the village of Tsel’. He also said Mr Prigozhin was in Belarus, although there was no confirmation.

On Thursday, in a rare session with foreign journalists, Mr. Lukahsenko that Mr. Prigozhin was in Russia, a free man. On Friday, a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military intelligence said Mr Prigozhin was believed to be in Moscow, with no apparent restrictions on his movements.

General Kasinsky was hesitant about the camp’s purpose. He said it would be used for a military exercise in September, and insisted that the tents and cages be set up as soon as part of an exercise in rapid field camp construction.

But he also told visiting journalists, almost as if with a wink and a nod, that the base “could be recommended as one of the places” where Wagner soldiers could be housed.

Mr. Lukashenko clearly enjoys being seen as an important international figure, involved in diplomacy and power politics. But it was not clear why his government, which has a hostile view of media outlets it does not control, would invite foreign journalists to visit a place normally inaccessible to them. Nor was it clear why Belarus, days after cautiously welcoming the Wagner fighters, wanted to publicly acknowledge their absence.

Having inflated his role in ending the crisis, Mr. Lukashenko has made it clear that he is subservient to his patron, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “The main question of where Wagner will be deployed and what he will do does not depend on me; it depends on Russia’s leadership,” he said Thursday, repeatedly referring to Putin as “big brother.”

When it comes to Wagner’s dark future, Igor Ilyash, a journalist, said that “creating a sense of uncertainty is beneficial to everyone: Lukashenko, Putin and Prigozhin.” Mr. Ilyash and his wife, Katsiaryna Andreyeva, published a book on Belarus and the war in Ukraine in 2020, with a section on Wagner; it was almost immediately banned in Belarus and Ms. Andreyeva was arrested in November of that year while working as a TV journalist.

“For Putin it is useful because it diverts the attention of Ukraine and NATO from Russia to Belarus,” he said. For Lukashenko it is useful because it shows him as more than just a vassal of Putin, Mr Ilyash said, “at a time when many people already stopped considering him an independent actor.” And for Mr. Prigozhin, it leaves open the possibility that Wagner will not be shut down.

Wagner’s future could also become a political issue for Mr. Lukashenko. He allowed Russian troops to invade Ukraine from Belarusian territory last year, but has avoided using his soldiers for the Kremlin’s cause, which political analysts and independent journalists say is unpopular in Belarus. Private military companies are officially illegal in both Belarus and Russia, but neither Lukashenko nor Putin have felt the need to enforce the law.

While at least a dozen Belarusian citizens have fought with Wagner’s forces in Ukraine since 2014, including two accused of war crimes by Ukraine last year, no one has been charged with criminal charges, Mr Ilyash said. However, in March 2022, Belarus accused 50 civilians fighting on the Ukrainian side of “complicity in an armed conflict on the territory of a foreign state.”

In the town of Asipovichy, near the revived base, many locals expressed concern about the possible arrival of Wagner soldiers.

“They’re hitmen,” says 69-year-old Mikhail, who works at a local factory. “Why should I be happy that they are here? Defending your country is one thing, but attacking another country is reprehensible.”

Mikhail kept his surname a secret due to the possibility of retaliation from the repressive Belarusian government, which cracked down on any sign of dissent following a wave of pro-democracy protests in 2020.

“I know people who signed petitions in support of candidates besides Lukashenko in 2020 and are still being fired because of the level of repression,” he said.

The area around Asipovichy is home to a number of military bases, including one believed to have been used as a training ground for Russian soldiers. Another local, Vladimir, said he often saw Russian soldiers training there or traveling through the city on their way to and from the battlefields in Ukraine.

He estimated that about 70 percent of people in his community were angry that Mr. Lukashenko Mr. Putin had allowed some of his invasion to be staged from Belarusian soil. He said that he first tried to invite the Russian soldiers he encountered to his home and explain that the war was pointless, but then he gave up.

“They’ve all been brainwashed, they really believe they’re fighting Nazis,” he said, referring to Putin’s declaration for the invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Lukashenko has previously used Wagner fighters to foster a sense of strategic ambiguity. In 2020, an armed special unit of the Belarusian KGB arrested a group of Wagner fighters in a sleepy resort outside the capital Minsk. At the time, Lukashenko stated with great pomp that the fighters had been sent by Russia to disrupt his imminent re-election.

But days later, Mr. Lukashenko faced a different kind of challenge, when thousands of people took to the streets to protest the election results – his government said Mr. Lukashenko won with a landslide victory – which they called fraudulent. Suddenly the reign of Mr. Lukashenko, weaker than ever, deployed special police units to ruthlessly suppress the protests.

He also felt compelled to seek help from Mr Putin, who was quick to offer his own police units to help suppress the uprising, but in the end none of them were called upon. The official story surrounding the arrested Wagner fighters quickly changed: they were victims of an elaborate plot devised by the Ukrainian secret service in collaboration with the United States.

Now Mr. Lukashenko is ready to welcome Wagner fighters, to the delight of Mr. Putin.

The base in Tsel’, 200 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, was formerly used by Belarus’ 465th Missile Brigade, which relocated in 2018.

During their highly choreographed tour, journalists were not allowed to speak to the small group of soldiers present, who General Kasinsky said were responsible for guarding the tents.

General Kasinsky said Belarus had no reason to fear receiving Wagner fighters on its territory.

“For now, we see no reason for danger,” he said.

Reporting contributed by Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.