The hitherto missing Yevgeny Prigozhin has spoken for the first time since he staged the biggest challenge to the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 23 years in power a month ago. The Wagner leader confirmed on Wednesday through a video broadcast on Telegram, in which he appeared with another of the group’s founders, Dmitry Utkinthat the private company of mercenaries “will be here in Belarus for some time” before regrouping his forces and “leaving for Africa”, where he will continue to operate.
It is the first confirmation that the oligarch remains in his Belarusian exileimposed thanks to the mediation of autocrat Alexander Lukashenko, who intervened to defuse Wagner’s armed mutiny when the mercenaries were already at the gates of Moscow.
The Belarusian president acknowledged two weeks ago in a strange press conference that he had lost track of Prigozhin. Lukashenko hinted that could have returned to his native St. Petersburg or, perhaps, by then he would already be back in Moscow. But the Kremlin leaked after a few days that Putin had held a meeting with him and about thirty high-ranking Wagner officials shortly after the rebellion, in which they offered the oligarch to cede the reins of the group. But the formerly known as “Putin’s chef” turned down the offer.
“We may return to the ‘special military operation’ when we are sure that they are not going to dishonor us or our experience,” Prigozhin reveals in the video, in which he has once again insisted on his criticism of the military high command after Putin had decided to keep both the chief of the Army General Staff, General Valery Gerasimovas well as his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Meanwhile, almost as a challenge, the head of the private military company says that it will turn Belarus “into the second best Army in the world. And we will fight for it, if necessary.
According to the Belamova Telegram channel, the video was recorded on the outskirts of the city of Osipovichi, an area reserved by the Belarusian Ministry of Defense for Wagner mercenaries who have chosen to remain part of the group’s discipline. Some 2,225 fighters are stationed in this area, according to estimates. Prigozhin himself thanked the Belarusian authorities and people in the video for receiving them “not just as heroes, but as brothers.” They say that the village girls gossip and drool about the Wagner boys who have arrived. But be careful not to offend anyone here. That is why we will treat them as brothers », he adds between laughs.
The recording also stands out because speaks for the first time in public in years one of the founders of Wagner, the obscure commander Dmitri Utkin, a former special forces officer of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, who left the ranks of the Army to create Wagner in 2014 at the hands of Prigozhin.
Yes, if you haven’t already guessed, I’m ‘Wagner’. Most of you know me, and I know most of you personally. Thank you all very much for the work we have done. It is thanks to this work, damn it… that the name PMC Wagner has reverberated throughout the world!” Utkin comments in the video as the fighters exclaim between laughs: “We serve PMC Wagner, and we’re going to kill the fagots!”
