A week after brokering an agreement between Wagner Founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Wagner could come and pass their combat experience to his army.
Lukashenko’s proposal comes after he was given credit for defusing the tension caused by Wagner’s armed insurrection against Russia.
The insurrection came to an end after Lukashenko, who is a friend of Prigozhin for over 20 years, successfully brokered a deal according to which the Wagner chief had to move to Belarus.
Wagner troops were also given the option to either sign up with the Russian military or authorities, go back to friend family, or go to Belarus with Prigozhin.
Lukashenko had said that he does not fear Wagner and that he had known them for a long time, noting that he has been friends with Prigozhin for more than 20 years.
He also said,
“These [Wagner troops] are people who fought all over the world to establish a normal civilization. The West hates them to the core”.
Lukashenko also warned that a world-scale military-political crisis unprecedented in the history of mankind was brewing, and criticized the West for not understanding the need for dialogue to resolve this situation.
Satellite images appear to show a suspected Wagner camp at a Belarusian military base near Ukraine
Meanwhile, reports of images provided by Planet Labs PLC show what looks like a newly built military-style camp in Belarus, with dozens of tents erected within the past two weeks at an ex-military base outside Osipovichi, a Belarusian town located 230 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the other hand, said that his intelligence was monitoring the situation closely, saying that they are carefully analyzing every fact and any prospects in all directions.
He also said Ukrainian top generals were tasked to strengthen the northern direction to guarantee peace.
Wagner founder’s media holding group to shut down
With Prigozhin now in Belarus, Russia reportedly blocked news outlets linked to Wagner, including public access to Rafian.RU, and four other websites operating under the umbrella of the Patriot Media Group, as said by Roskomnadzor, the said website of the group has also been blacklisted.
Russian news agency TASS cited employees of the affected media outlets, saying that their parent company would be closed.
And all subsidiaries cease operations.
Notably, Prigozhin was listed as the head of the Patriot Media Group’s board of trustees until May.
