The leader of the Wagner group is alive.
In any case, according to a video where Prigozhin gives a fiery speech to his soldiers – that they are not going back to the war in Ukraine.
– I am surprised that he survived, says lieutenant colonel Joakim Paasikivi.
Quick version
ⓘ The summary is made with the support of AI tools from OpenAI and quality assured by Aftonbladet. Read our AI policy here.
Show more
The new video, posted on Telegram by a Wagner account, is said to show Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in Belarus addressing his forces.
– You have done a lot for Russia. But what happens at [ukrainska] the front is shameful and there is no reason for us to participate in it. Therefore, the decision has been made that we will stay in Belarus for a while, he says in the video.
Prigozhin has not been seen in public for nearly a month after he left the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don the night of the Wagner group’s armed uprising against the Kremlin.
The rebellion was extinguished after negotiations with President Alexandr Lukashenko, where the Wagner group was guaranteed free passage to Belarus, according to the British The Times.
– When he suddenly, after having such an incredibly high profile, suddenly disappeared, it made me and others really speculate whether he was now under interrogation or alive. I am still surprised that he has survived this story – and don’t really know why, from a Moscow perspective, says Joakim Paasikivi.
He says that Prigozhin’s plane flew between Belarus and Russia several times.
– It seems that there have been hearings or an agreement that is being negotiated, probably at the urging of Putin, then it has ended up that the Kremlin believes that the risk of getting rid of Prigozhin is greater than letting him go into exile. But there is still no clarity on that.
– What is interesting is what the relationship between Lukashenko and Prigorzhin is. Now Lukashenko has a force of a few thousand men and Prigozhin is not known to follow anyone’s chain. Having such a force in the country is a certain element of risk. What does the agreement between Lukashenko and Prigozhin look like to accept this? Who gets what? And who pays the Wagner soldiers? Where does Prigozhin’s loyalty lie? He talks about them being received as brothers, he says.
Russian propaganda tries to trumpet that the Suwalki corridor between Belarus and Kaliningrad is to be captured, Paasikivi dismisses this.
– It is fantasy that you could do it without there being a war against NATO.
The Wagner group can be called into the Belarus army
Prigozhin’s video comes after satellite images showed a large convoy of Wagner soldiers arriving at a military base in southern Belarus, less than a hundred miles from the capital, Minsk.
President Lukashenko said on Tuesday that the mercenaries were in place.
– If Belarus needs them, we call in Wagner’s private military army to defend the country, he says.
The absence of the Wagner group is not a major interruption for Russia’s advances in the war, says Joakim Paasikivi.
– No. They have had a front section and there it has gone well. The paradoxical thing about Prigozhin is that he and Wagner have had an extremely ruthless fighting technique and tactics. They have sacrificed their own, above all the prisoners they have recruited. Since then, even the hard core of the seasoned Wagner soldiers, those who have been recruited previously from special forces and other Russian elite units, suffered heavy losses.
– But what also characterizes Prigorzhin is caring for the squad when they are not fighting.
Progozhin also says in the video that the Wagner group will not return to Ukraine in the near future. Instead, the sights are set on Africa.
Dimitri Utkin, one of the founders of the Wagner group, says;
– This is not the end. It is only the beginning of the greatest work in the world, which will begin soon. Welcome to Hell.