Prigozhin is said to be in Russia as the Wagner mystery deepens

Mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin is in Russia and is a “free man” despite having rebelled against Moscow’s military leadership, the Belarusian leader said Thursday. become of them.

President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus told reporters that Mr. Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday morning, and then “maybe went to Moscow, maybe somewhere else, but he is not on the territory of Belarus”.

It was Mr. Lukashenko brokering a deal between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Prigozhin to end the brief mutiny. He said days later that the Wagner leader had gone to Belarus, although it is not clear whether that actually happened.

Mr. Prigozhin is free for now, Mr. Lukashenko said, though he admitted he “didn’t know what would happen next,” brushing off the idea that Mr. Putin might just have Mr. Prigozhin, an essential ally until recently, murdered.

“If you think that Putin is so evil and vindictive that he will kill Prigozhin tomorrow – no, this will not happen,” he said.

If Mr Prigozhin – reviled in the state media as a traitor – is in fact free and in Russia less than two weeks after staging what the Kremlin called a coup attempt, that would be one of the more baffling twists in a story full of them . On Wednesday, a prominent current affairs TV show aired video of what it said was a police search of his lavish mansion in St. Petersburg, where it said large amounts of cash, firearms, passports, wigs and drugs had been found. A spokesman for Mr Prigozhin denied that the house belonged to him.

Some Russian news outlets reported that Mr. Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg on Wednesday or Thursday. A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the Wagner leader had been in Russia much of the time since the mutiny, but the official said it was not clear whether he was in Belarus, in part because Mr. Prigozhin apparently uses body doubling to disguise his movements.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov deflected a question about Mr Prigozhin’s whereabouts by saying the government had “neither the ability nor the desire” to monitor his movements.

During a rare press conference with local and foreign journalists at the marble presidential palace in Minsk, Mr. Lukashenko, always eager to be seen as an international statesman, clearly enjoyed the spotlight thrown on him by the most dramatic challenge of Mr Putin’s authority in his 23 years in power. But days after offering sanctuary to Wagner fighters and their leader in his country, Mr. Lukashenko had no clarity on where they would go or what role they would play.

While Mr. Lukashenko, an autocrat who has ruled his country for 29 years, continued to boast about his mediation and peacemaking, he also made clear his deference, even servility, to Russia and Mr. Putin, whom he referred to several times as “big brother .”

“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. He added that he had spoken with Mr Prigozhin on Wednesday and that Wagner would “continue to fulfill his duties to Russia as long as possible”, although he did not elaborate.

Mr. Putin has long tried to pull Belarus deeper into Russian political, economic and military orbits. For years, Mr. Lukashenko, whose power depends heavily on managing that relationship, did well enough to maintain some independence and even tried to establish trade links with the West.

But that faded after Putin helped him brutally suppress opposition protests in 2020, beginning a period of increasing repression in which government critics were jailed or fled into exile. Under Western sanctions and increasingly treated as an international pariah, Belarus – with a population of nine million – has become increasingly dependent on Russia – with a population of 143 million – for economic aid, energy, high-tech imports and diplomatic support.

In February, when Mr Putin thanked him for traveling to Moscow for a meeting, Mr Lukashenko replied in a remark captured by television cameras: “As if I couldn’t agree.”

A year earlier, Mr. Lukashenko Mr. Putin allowed one strike of his invasion of Ukraine to launch from Belarusian soil, and this year allowed Russia to station nuclear-powered short-range missiles there. But he has so far resisted efforts to directly involve the Belarusian military in the war.

During the Wagner uprising, Mr. Lukashenko played the role of an intermediary and spoke with Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin. He later boasted that he had made peace between them by persuading the Wagner leader to resign and not to “do anything rash” on the Russian president, such as having Mr. Prigozhin killed or bloodily crushing the mutiny. His claims could not be verified.

Wagner’s mercenaries are some of the most ruthless and effective units fighting for Russia in Ukraine, taking the lead in capturing the city of Bakhmut after a long and very brutal battle. But Mr Putin and his government have chosen to end Wagner’s independence by requiring his fighters in Ukraine to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry – a key cause of Mr Prigozhin’s mutiny.

Mr Lukashenko said that all Wagner units in Belarus could be called upon to defend the country, and that the group’s agreement to fight for Belarus in case of war was the main condition for granting permission to to move to the country.

“There will be a lot of demand for their experience,” he said.

Mr. Lukashenko also praised the group, indicating that at least part of Wagner’s force could remain intact.

He has positioned himself as a power broker who had helped resolve a crisis, and not for the first time. Beginning his press conference on Thursday in an ornate, high-ceilinged conference room, he reminded dozens of journalists in attendance that it was in the same room where he had received the leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine for peace. talks in 2015.

In 2014, Russia had captured the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, and proxy forces backed by Moscow launched a separatist war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region — which Russia now claims as its own. An agreement reached in Minsk in 2015 contained steps – largely ignored in subsequent years – to lead to lasting peace, and fighting in Donbas, while reduced, did not cease.

In the first weeks of last year’s full-scale invasion, Mr Lukashenko invited delegations from Kiev and Moscow to Belarus, but they found no common ground for continued talks, let alone peace.

Speaking to a small group of reporters at the Independence Palace on Thursday, Mr Lukashenko may be hoping to establish some measure of independence from his Moscow benefactors and credibility with the West, while potentially getting a boost domestically, with a population more interested in peace than joining Putin’s war in Ukraine.

It also presented a patina of normality in a country where independent journalism is effectively criminalized. Accreditation for Western journalists is unusual and can often only be obtained when Mr Lukashenko deems it in his best interests to speak to them.

Their presence – and their interest in Mr Lukashenko’s role in the negotiations between Mr Putin and Mr Prigozhin – was the subject of national news in Belarus, where the state-controlled media regularly publicized the president’s international status. praised.

Despite the formality of the scene, where white-gloved servants poured tea, Mr. Lukashenko, who had a map showing all the journalists present, behaved largely informally, addressing many reporters by name and joking.

Those in the Belarusian state media asked friendly questions, asked how Belarusian society should prepare to resist US State Department information campaigns, or urged him to speak about the government’s efforts to taking Russian-occupied Ukraine to summer camps in Belarus – who are Ukrainian prosecutors to research as a possible war crime.

Mr Lukashenko usually evaded much more difficult questions from foreign journalists, such as whether he regretted Russia invading from Belarus. Instead, he blamed the invasion on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

He also mocked journalists who questioned domestic repression, especially in recent years. Viasna, a human rights organization whose Nobel Peace Prize founder Ales Bialatski is behind bars in Belarus, has counted nearly 1,500 political prisoners.

Before the 2020 elections, Mr Lukashenko’s government jailed potential candidates for running against him or banned them from appearing on the ballot. After the government claimed that Mr. Lukashenko had won 81 percent of the vote, opponents declared fraud and mass protests began.

Belarusian news outlets that covered the demonstrations have been criminalized as “extremist” and following them or sharing their material on social media could lead to imprisonment.

Despite its small population, Belarus scores fifth in the world in the number of imprisoned journalists, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. The Association of Belarusian Journalists, itself banned as an “extremist” organization, counts 33 journalists who are detained.

When asked on Thursday why a leading opposition leader, Sergei Tikhanovsky, had not been heard or given access to his lawyer in months, the Belarusian leader appeared to stumble upon his last name, as if it were unknown to him.

Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting from Berlin, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.