Lukashenko says Prigozhin is back in Russia
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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who last month brokered a deal to end an armed mutiny in Russia, says Yevgeny Prigozhin is back in Russia.
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Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Moscow's Kremlin, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013. (AP)
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arranged an agreement to stop Russia's armed mutiny last month, announced on Thursday that Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was no longer in Belarus.
He announced on June 27 that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus as part of the agreement."
As for Prigozhin, he's in St Petersburg," he told reporters on Thursday, "He is not on Belarusian territory."
This comes after Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov's statement on Friday when he stressed that Russia will deal with the repercussions created by an attempted armed mutiny by Prigozhin on its own.
During the news briefing, he recalled that Russia has always come out of any predicaments stronger. "This will be the case this time. We feel that this process has begun...Thank you for your concern, but we will deal with it," he tersely stated.
Lukashenko adds that he intended to hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss the Wagner Group private military company.
"I intend to meet him [Putin] in the near future," Lukashenko said, as quoted by the state-run Belta news agency, adding that issues related to the Wagner Group will be discussed.
Read next: How the Russian cook chickened out: Mutiny and bureaucracy
The top Russian diplomat said that Russia does not have to explain to anyone about the attempted armed mutiny and its potential impact on the processes in the country, assuring that Moscow acts transparently.
On the evening of June 23, the Wagner Group took control of an army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, and marched toward Moscow the next day. Prigozhin claimed that his activities were in retaliation for the defense ministry's purported assault on his group's field camps, but the ministry denied this.
After speaking with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who was acting at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin decided to put an end to the rebellion, and Lukashenko later acknowledged Prigozhin's arrival in Belarus.
