Belarusian president says he warned Prigozhin twice that his life was in danger
Zach Vasile
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The president of Belarus said Friday that he warned the late mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin twice that his life was likely in danger during and following the aborted uprising by his Wagner Group against the Russian government earlier this summer.
“The first time was when I phoned him and negotiations [were taking] place while they were marching on Moscow,” President Alexander Lukashenko told Belarusian state news agency Belta, as reported by CNN. “I told him, ‘Yevgeny, do you understand that you will doom your people and will perish yourself?’ He had just come back from the front. On an impulse, he said, ‘I will die then, damn it!'”
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Prigozhin is presumed dead following a plane crash outside Moscow on Wednesday that killed 10 people. He was listed as a passenger on the plane, and Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm his death by offering mixed praise for his former associate at a press conference.
Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, granted asylum to Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters after their June mutiny in a deal worked out with the Kremlin. The arrangement ensured that Wagner forces remained fighting on Russia’s side in its war against Ukraine but reduced their threat to Moscow and the Russian defense establishment. It was believed that Prigozhin would be directing Wagner operations from Belarus, but he quickly reappeared in Russia, including for a sit-down with Putin in late June, according to the New York Times. Commentators had called that meeting remarkable, since figures who cross Putin are almost never welcomed back into his fold, and some suggested it showed that Putin’s hold on Russia was slipping due to political forces unleashed by the invasion of Ukraine.
Lukashenko said the second time he spoke with Prigozhin, he warned him “in no uncertain terms to watch it.” He did not say when or where that second conversation took place. The Belarusian leader also dismissed the idea, already firmly held in most of the West, that Putin was behind the plane crash.
“I can’t say who did it. I won’t even become a lawyer for my older brother. But I know Putin. He is a prudent, very calm, and slow-paced person when making decisions on other less complex issues. Therefore, I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that he is to blame,” Lukashenko told reporters. “It was too rough, unprofessional work, for that matter.”
Lukashenko also said that he never guaranteed Prigozhin’s safety as part of the Wagner amnesty arrangement and indicated that Prigozhin never asked him to.
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Prigozhin, a criminal-turned-restaurateur, gained fame catering events for the Kremlin, becoming known as “Putin’s chef.” He later reinvented himself as a mercenary leader, saying he formed Wagner to help protect ethnic Russians persecuted by the Ukrainian government during the Donbas War in the 2010s. His claim of having founded Wagner has been disputed, though it is certain that he led the organization until this week.
Western intelligence officials who have spoken anonymously to major newspapers in the United States and Europe have suggested that Prigozhin’s plane could have been brought down by a bomb placed on board.