Prigozhin’s Belarusian Break

By Andrew Stuttaford

Saturday, June 24, 2023

 

So, with Belarus’s President Lukashenko, a Putin puppet, acting supposedly as a broker, presumably to save Putin’s face, a deal has been cut. The Wagner forces are going back south. No prosecutions for anyone involved in the mutiny. Wagner troops who declined the opportunity to march on Moscow will be offered positions in the regular army (the army’s officers must be thrilled about the prospect of seeing a bunch of dangerous psychopaths who despise them showing up at their barracks). I’m not clear yet what happens to the others, other than that they will not be prosecuted, thanks to “their heroic deeds at the front.” Prigozhin will go and live in Belarus. All charges against him have been dropped. The future role of the Wagner Group (if any), which also carries out dirty work for the Kremlin beyond Russia and Ukraine, will be interesting to see.

 

At first glance, this looks like a weak response by Putin, and my guess (what else is there?) is that, for whatever reason, he must have been forced to cut a deal. That weakness will not have passed unnoticed within the factions that operate at the higher reaches of Russia’s hierarchy. There is blood in the water there.

 

As for Prigozhin, Belarus, a Russian vassal state, is not the safest of destinations, as he must surely know. Unless he has received credible promises of some role in Russia in the future (which seems unlikely), he can only have agreed to go to Minsk because the failure of his putsch left him little alternative, at least for now. For his part, Putin presumably wanted Prigozhin somewhere where he could be closely watched and (I would imagine) kept away from social media, rather than in Syria or one of the African countries where Wagner has been helping the ruling regime.

 

Once in Minsk, Prigozhin would probably do well to avoid windows. Putin needs to restore his reputation as a strongman, and, Russia being Russia, it will be hard to do that while the man who attempted a coup against him remains untouched. And, of course, Putin’s underlying problem — the war in Ukraine — remains. It would not be a surprise to see some demonstration from the Kremlin designed to show that its will, and its capacity, to prevail remains undented.