MOSCOW: Mercenary fighters of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group are preparing to move to Belarus under the terms of a deal that defused their mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, a senior commander of the group was quoted as saying.
Since the June 23-24 mutiny, which saw Wagner fighters briefly seize a southern Russian city and march towards Moscow, the exact whereabouts of Prigozhin and his mercenaries have been unclear. Under the deal that ended the mutiny, Prigozhin was meant to move to Belarus and his men some of them former convicts freed early to fight in Ukraine were given the option to move with him to Belarus, join Russia’s regular armed forces, or go home.
However, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that Prigozhin and thousands of his fighters were still in Russia, raising questions about the deal’s implementation.