Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has taken credit for brokering a deal between his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Wagner military group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, heading off what appeared to be an armed mutiny headed toward Moscow Saturday.
On Friday, Prigozhin made the unverified claim that his mercenary forces had been attacked by the Russian military, using that as a pretext to launch an armed march on Moscow. They ultimately came within 200 kilometers of the city before he ordered his troops to return to their camps to avoid spilling “Russian blood” under the terms of the agreement Lukashenko announced.
Details about that agreement are scant, but the Russian state’s criminal investigation against Prigozhin was supposedly dropped (though that’s less clear as of Monday), his troops retreated from their “march for justice,” and he will now live in seeming exile in Belarus. “The president of Belarus informed the president of Russia in detail about the results of negotiations with the leadership of Wagner PMC [private military company],” Lukashenko’s office said in a statement. “The president of Russia supported and thanked his Belarusian counterpart for the work done.”
Though the Kremlin has confirmed the deal and says it was the result of Lukashenko’s “personal initiative,” the precise contours of his involvement still aren’t independently confirmed. Analysts doubt that Lukashenko was indeed a key broker of the deal, but he may have gotten involved to ensure his own survival, which is likely tied to Putin’s, and in an attempt to win influence over the Kremlin. But unconfirmed reports from Russian state media also indicate that the investigation of Prigozhin may be ongoing, and Prigozhin’s whereabouts remain unknown, suggesting that there may be more to the deal than has been stated publicly — or it might be more fragile than stated.
But it’s nevertheless a moment in the spotlight for Lukashenko, a…
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