Updated 00:51 | Published 00:45
President Lukashenko has no insight into what the Wagner group is doing in Belarus.
This is stated by opposition leader Valerij Sakhashchyk.
– My contacts in the Belarusian army believe that control of the nuclear weapons is transferred to Wagner, he says in an interview.
After the aborted coup attempt at the end of June, the private army Wagner Group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin have been given a free lease by Putin to the Russian vassal state of Belarus.
In recent days, tensions between Russia and Poland have increased.
In a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg on Sunday, Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko said he “has control” of the Wagner soldiers, but hinted they want to march on NATO country Poland.
– They are in a bad mood, he said.
The opposition: No transparency
The Belarusian resistance movement gives a completely different picture and states that Lukashenko has no insight into what Wagner is doing in the country.
The information comes from Valery Sakhashchyk, former lieutenant colonel in the Belarusian army and defense adviser to opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya.
– I have inside contacts in the Russian security forces. They believe that Belarus has been handed over to Prigozhin. Now he does what he wants without asking Lukashenko, says Sakhashchyk i an interview with the exiled Russian newspaper Current Time.
In recent days, the Wagner group has had a joint military exercise with the Belarusian army in the forests around Brest, just a few kilometers from the Polish border.
According to The Guardian 2,500 Wagner soldiers may have already made it to Belarus. But according to Valerij Sakhashchyk, the group has assumed that the total number will be 10,000.
– One thing is clear to me: Lukashenko is outside the chain of command in this matter. In other words, can Prigozhin start the same uprising as in Russia and march towards Minsk? I don’t think it will happen in that form, but I see it as a possibility that he can do a lot and maybe everything in Belarus, he says in the interview.
“No one will give the order”
According to Sakhashchyk, the Belarusian army has fewer than 50,000 combat-ready soldiers. Moreover, none of them have any practical experience of war and they have been fed Russian and domestic propaganda about the strength of the Wagner group, he emphasizes.
– Therefore, I am afraid that no one will give the order to go against Wagner in a crisis situation.
In May, both Putin and Lukashenko stated that Russian nuclear weapons would be moved to Belarus. In mid-June, Putin said they were already in the country. Both the United States and the United Kingdom assess the data as credible.
– Putin doesn’t always lie, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace recently told CNN.
“All this is very unpleasant”
In the interview, Valerij Sakhashchyk brings up the possibility that Wagner can gain control of the Russian atomic bombs.
– I have a large network of contacts in the Belarusian army. The people I talk to have about the same opinions as me. They feel resentment and indignation at what is happening.
– These people quite seriously believe that control of the tactical nuclear weapons is also transferred to Wagner. Their soldiers have been deployed near the 465th Missile Brigade which has Iskander robots. All this is very unpleasant. The Belarusian officers feel like hostages in a dirty political game.