Lukashenko regime anxious about stability as Putin sends Wagner fighters to Belarus
Joel Gehrke
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Russia will allow Wagner Group fighters who participated in paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted uprising to go into exile in Belarus, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Those who wish will be able to leave for Belarus,” Putin said in a brief address Monday, two days after Wagner Group fighters halted their sprint toward Moscow. “The promise I made will be kept.”
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Putin struck a magnanimous pose toward the rank-and-file Wagner Group fighters, whom he portrayed as “patriots of Russia” who were manipulated by their leaders into participating in the fight. And while his actual intentions toward Prigozhin and the Wagner Group fighters remain uncertain in Western circles, his stated plan raises the possibility that the Kremlin chief is throwing his Wagner Group problem into Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s lap, some officials say.
“It’s absolutely dangerous [for the Belarusian regime],” said one senior European official. “Because if you are not able to pay, and someone else is able to pay, then mercenaries will do the job.”
Lukashenko has claimed a leading role in the negotiations to avert a confrontation between Prigozhin and the forces loyal to Putin and the Russian defense authorities. Yet a senior member of the regime also acknowledged the pressure that internal security officials feel to maintain control.
“The military and political situation is very complicated, including along the border of our country,” Belarusian Security Council State Secretary Aleksandr Volfovich said Monday in a commencement address to the academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, per Belarusian state media. “And the political situation in our country largely depends on the ability of our system to maintain law and order. … You are the core of this system, and you must ensure law and order.”
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That task could be complicated by the arrival of any substantial number of Wagner Group forces, as Russian media reports suggest camps are being constructed in Belarus to host 8,000 fighters.
“Yeah, that could be a problem for Belarus because even if that could be just two brigades of Wagner fighters, that would be enough to organize a coup in a country like Belarus, of course,” a senior Ukrainian government adviser said.
The prospect of Wagner fighters taking positions in Belarus spurred Lithuania — a NATO member that shares a border with Belarus and Kaliningrad, a sovereign Russian region on the Baltic Sea — to expedite “a new border cover plan” for Lithuanian military forces to reinforce border security guards in the event of a crisis.
“Even more intelligence capabilities have to be devoted to assessing our eastern border and the political and security aspects of Belarus, not forgetting, of course, the Kaliningrad region,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters on Sunday.
Still, Western officials and analysts remain uncertain if Putin really does plan to allow a substantial number of the erstwhile rebels to move to Belarus.
“I think it is a bit early to say exactly because things may still evolve,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters earlier Monday. “We are, of course, monitoring very closely, and we are able to react quickly if there is a need.”
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In any case, the Ukrainian official downplayed the idea that the movement of Wagner Group forces to Belarus would allow Prigozhin to threaten Ukraine unless he has Russian government support.
“Wagner is just actually a couple of light infantry brigades,” the Ukrainian adviser said. “We are not scared of them. They are not any serious kind of military power for wars like war in Ukraine, a modern big-scale war. … In Ukraine, all the successes Wagner had, it was just because Wagner was used as assault infantry in addition to big conventional capabilities of Russian armed forces.”