'Zhenya… they will squash you like a bug!' Belarus dictator Lukashenko reveals the astonishing conversations he had at the weekend with mutinous Prigozhin – and with Putin, who fumed the Wagner chief wouldn't take his calls
Lukashenko warned Prigozhin the Kremlin would never fulfill his demand to oust defence minister and chief of the general staff
By James Callery
Daily Mail
June 27, 2023
Lukashenko said he told him Prigozhin that he would be 'squashed like a bug' if he tried to attack Moscow, and warned that the Kremlin would never fulfill his demand to oust Russian defence miniter Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov
Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko has revealed the astonishing conversations he had at the weekend with Yevgeny Prigozhin, noting that Vladimir Putin was furious that the Wagner chief wouldn't take his calls during the brief uprising.
Lukashenko said he told Prigozhin that he would be 'squashed like a bug' if he tried to attack Moscow, and warned that the Kremlin would never fulfill his demand to oust Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
Prigozhin arrived in Belarus today under a deal that ended a brief mutiny against the Russian military by his fighters, state news agency BELTA said, quoting Lukashenko.
On its Telegram channel the Belta news agency quotes the Belarusian leader as saying: 'Security guarantees, as he promised yesterday, were provided. I see that Prigozhin was already flying on this plane. Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today.'
Flight tracking service Flightradar24's website showed an Embraer Legacy 600 jet, bearing identification codes that match a plane linked to Prigozhin in US sanctions documents, descending to landing altitude near the capital Minsk.
Members of the Wagner Group prepare to depart from the Southern Military District's headquarters and return to their base in Rostov-on-Don, Russia on June 24, 2023
The exile of the 62-year-old owner of the Wagner Group was part of a deal that ended the short-lived mutiny in Russia.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia’s FSB security service dropped charges against participants in the brief uprising as part of a deal negotiated by Lukashenko and his long-term ally Putin.
Lukashenko said Prigozhin and some of his troops are welcome to stay in Belarus 'for some time' at their own expense.
In Moscow, Putin praised Russia's armed forces for preventing a civil war as he sought to reassert his authority after the crisis.
Lukashenko detailed his back-and-forth phone calls with Putin and Prigozhin on Saturday to try to bring an end to the coup attempt, during which the Wagner chief swore profusely.
He said Prigozhin had been determined to advance to Moscow to protest the alleged wrongdoings against Wagner, but he quickly changed his mind once the negotiator informed him that he would face grave results.
'For a long time, I was trying to convince him. And in the end, I said, "You know, you can do whatever you want. But don't be offended by me. Our brigade is ready for transfer to Moscow," ' Lukashenko told state media.
Lukashenko told Prigozhin that even if he considered the rebellion a protest, the results of a Russian bloodbath could be disastrous not only Moscow, but for neighboring nations.
'This situation does not only concern Russia. It's not just because this is our Fatherland and because, God forbid, this turmoil would spread all over Russia, and the prerequisites for this were colossal, we were next,' he said.
Touting his successful negotiation on Tuesday, Lukashenko claimed he was the key player in securing peace over the weekend.
In this handout photo taken from video released by Prigozhin Press Service, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, records his video addresses in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Saturday, June 24, 2023
People gathered to bid farewell to Prigozhin, with one man even reaching through his car window to shake the exiled Wagner leader's hand
PMC Wagner Group servicemen seen pulling out of downtown Rostov-on-Don and returning to their bases on June 24
According to flight tracking website Flight Radar, the Embraer Legacy 600 business jet with the number RA-02795 belonging to Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin arrived in Minsk at 7.40am local time (5.40am GMT) - suggesting he has begun his exile
Lukashenko asserted that he spoke with Putin over the phone at 10am local time on Saturday after Wagner forces set up a base in the Russian city of Rostov to march on towards the capital.
'The most dangerous thing, as I understand it, is not what the situation was, but how it could develop and its consequences. I also realized there was a harsh decision taken — to destroy,' Lukashenko said, suggesting that the Russian President was more than ready to order an assault on Wagner.
'I suggested Putin not to hurry. Let's talk with Prigozhin, with his commanders,' he added.
Lukashenko claimed that Prigozhin did not answer calls from Putin, so they set up three communication channels with Rostov to negotiate with Wagner.
Within an hour of his first call with Putin, Lukashenko said, he was able to connect with Prigozhin, who immediately picked up and sounded elated at the opportunity to negotiate.
Despite Prigozhin being pleased to talk, Lukashenko said, the conversations were initially fiery, with the first half an hour spent by the Wagner chief issuing a number of oaths over the phone.
After things quietened, Lukashenko said, he managed to negotiate an end to the coup attempt by offering Prigozhin and his troops immunity, with the Wagner leader also agreeing to exile in Belarus.
Prigozhin said on Monday that his troops remain loyal to him despite admitting that around 1 per cent to 2 per cent of them have already accepted the Kremlin's offer to join the Ministry of Defense.
Putin spoke of the offer later that day, telling the troops that they can either choose to join the Russian government or throw down their arms and go home.
Meanwhile, preparations were underway for Wagner's troops, who numbered 25,000 according to Prigozhin, to hand over their heavy weapons to the Russian military, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.
Prigozhin had said those moves were being taken ahead of a July 1 deadline for his fighters to sign contracts - which he opposed - to serve under the Russian military's command.
Prigozhin issued no public statements on Tuesday.
Lukashenko said some of the Wagner fighters are now in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed last September.
The series of stunning events in recent days constitutes the gravest threat so far to Putin's grip on power amid the 16-month-old war in Ukraine, and he again acknowledged the threat on Tuesday in saying the result could have been a civil war.
In addresses this week, Putin has sought to project stability and demonstrate authority.
In a Kremlin ceremony on Tuesday, Putin walked down the red-carpeted stairs of the 15th century white-stone Palace of Facets to address soldiers and law enforcement officers, thanking them for their actions to avert the rebellion.
In a further show of continuity and business-as-usual, Russian media on Tuesday showed Shoigu, in his military uniform, greeting Cuba's visiting defense minister in a pomp-heavy ceremony. Prigozhin has said his goal had been to oust Shoigu and other military brass, not stage a coup against Putin.
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for 29 years while relying on Russian subsidies and support, portrayed the uprising as the latest development in the clash between Prigozhin and Shoigu.
While the mutiny unfolded, he said, he put Belarus' armed forces on a combat footing and urged Putin not to be hasty in his response, lest the conflict with Wagner spiral out of control.
Like Putin, Lukashenko portrayed the war in Ukraine as an existential threat, saying, 'If Russia collapses, we all will perish under the debris.'
Prigozhin has long expressed hatred and distrust of Russia's defence minister, Sergei Shoigu (centre)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would not disclose details about the Kremlin's deal with the Wagner chief.
He said only that Putin had provided Prigozhin with 'certain guarantees,' with the aim of avoiding a 'worst-case scenario'.
Asked why the rebels were allowed to get as close as about 200 kilometres from Moscow without facing serious resistance, National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov told reporters, 'We concentrated our forces in one fist closer to Moscow. If we spread them thin, they would have come like a knife through butter.'
Zolotov, a former Putin bodyguard, also said the National Guard lacks battle tanks and other heavy weapons and now would get them.
The mercenaries shot down at least six Russian helicopters and a military communications plane as they advanced on Moscow, killing at least a dozen airmen, according to Russian news reports.
The Defense Ministry didn't release information about casualties, but Putin mentioned them on Tuesday and honoured them with a moment of silence.
'Pilots, our combat comrades, died while confronting the mutiny,' he said. 'They didn't waver and fulfilled the orders and their military duty with dignity.'
In a televised address Monday night, Putin said rebellion organisers had played into the hands of Ukraine's government and its allies. Although critical of their leaders, he praised the rank-and-file mutineers who 'didn't engage in fratricidal bloodshed and stopped on the brink.'
A Washington-based think tank said that was 'likely in an effort to retain them' in the fight in Ukraine because Moscow needs 'trained and effective manpower' as it faces a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
The Institute for the Study of War also said the break between Putin and Prigozhin is likely beyond repair, and that providing the Wagner chief and his loyalists with Belarus as an apparent safe haven could be a trap.
Putin has offered Prigozhin's fighters the choice of either coming under Russian military command, leaving service or going to Belarus.
Prigozhin said, without elaborating, that the Belarusian leadership proposed solutions that would allow Wagner to operate 'in a legal jurisdiction'.
Lukashenko said there is no reason to fear Wagner's presence in his country, though in Russia, Wagner-recruited convicts have been suspected of violent crimes.
The Wagner troops have 'priceless' military knowledge and experience to share with Belarus, he said during a meeting with his defense minister.
But exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in a 2020 election that was widely seen as fraudulent and triggered mass protests, said Wagner troops will threaten the country and its neighbours.
'Belarusians don't welcome war criminal Prigozhin,' she told The Associated Press. 'If Wagner sets up military bases on our territory, it will pose a new threat to our sovereignty and our neighbors.'
As Russia announced preparations to disarm Wagner's mercenaries, Putin's arch foe, jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, launched a stinging attack on the president in his first comments since the aborted mutiny.
'There is no bigger threat to Russia than Putin's regime,' Navalny wrote on social media.
'Putin's regime is so dangerous to the country that even its inevitable demise will create the threat of civil war,' he wrote.
Putin himself attempted to portray the dramatic events at the weekend as a victory for the Russian regular military.
'You de facto stopped civil war,' Putin told troops from the defence ministry, National Guard, FSB security service and interior ministry gathered in a Kremlin courtyard to hold a minute's silence for airmen slain by Wagner.
'In the confrontation with rebels, our comrades-in-arms, pilots, were killed. They did not flinch and honourably fulfilled their orders and their military duty,' Putin said.
Fighters of Wagner private mercenary group pull out of the headquarters of the Southern Military District to return to base, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 24, 2023
Prigozhin, a former Kremlin ally and catering contractor who built Russia's most powerful private army, has boasted - with some support from news footage - that his men were cheered by civilians during his short-lived revolt.
But Putin insisted that Wagner's ordinary fighters had seen that 'the army and the people were not with them'.
In a separate meeting with defence officials, Putin confirmed that Wagner was wholly funded by the Russian federal budget, despite operating as an independent company, adding that in the past year alone since the assault on Ukraine, Moscow had paid the group 86.262 billion rubles (around £791,000) in salaries.
Russian officials have been trying to put the crisis behind them for three days, with the FSB dropping charges against rank-and-file Wagner troopers and the military preparing to disarm the group.
'Preparations are underway for the transfer of heavy military equipment from the private military company Wagner to units of the Russian armed forces,' the defence ministry said.
But questions remain over how the Kremlin allowed the violence of its operation in Ukraine to spill back into Russia.
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