MOSCOW – Moscow and Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military group, reached a compromise through the mediation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko late yesterday, Xinhua quoted the RIA Novosti news agency as reporting.
Prigozhin has accepted Lukashenko’s proposal to stop the advance of the Wagner troops and de-escalate the situation, the reports said.
Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin informed his Belarusian counterpart about the Wagner Group situation in Russia, and the heads of state agreed on joint actions.
“The president of Belarus held talks with Yevgeny Prigozhin. They came to an agreement on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on Russian territory,” the press service of the Belarusian president was quoted as saying.
Then the Wagner fighters left southern Russia’s Rostov region and headed to their field camps, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
The criminal case against Prigozhin will be dropped, and he will go to Belarus, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters late yesterday, without specifying what exactly Prigozhin will do in the former Soviet republic.
Lukashenko has been personally acquainted with Prigozhin for about 20 years, and “this was his personal proposal agreed with Putin”, Peskov said.
“There was a higher goal to avoid bloodshed, to avoid internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable results. It was for the sake of these goals that Lukashenko’s mediation efforts were made, and President Putin made the appropriate decision,” the spokesman said.
According to the official, the guarantee that Prigozhin would be able to leave for Belarus was the word of the Russian president.
The incident with the Wagner group will not affect the course of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, which will continue, he added. – Bernama, June 25, 2023
