The plane associated with Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin landed in Belarus on Tuesday morning. The Embraer Legacy 600 aircraft will have landed at an air base south of Minsk, it is currently unknown who was aboard the device, Reuters said.
According to the Kremlin, Prigozhin was due to travel to Belarus after fighting the insurgency last weekend.
An Embraer Legacy 600 registration “RA-02795”, reportedly a Business Jet used by Wagner PMC Leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has landed at Machulishchy Air Force Base in southern Minsk, Belarus after taking off from an airfield in the Rostov region in the southwest of… pic.twitter.com/Ny0oomL6bN
– OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 27, 2023
The arrival of the jet associated with Prigozhin in Belarus comes as Russia says the Wagner group is preparing to deliver military equipment to the Russian armed forces.
“Preparations are being made for the transfer of heavy military equipment from Wagner to active units of the Russian Armed Forces,” a statement from the Russian Defense Ministry reads.
However, Moscow’s security services reported that the criminal case against the mercenary group has been closed.
According to the state news agency Tass, the criminal case about the armed uprising has been closed by the FSB (Russian security services).
“During the investigation of the criminal case, it was found that the participants stopped taking actions aimed at committing an insurrection,” Tass writes.
“It is certain” that the participants in the riot “put an end to actions directly aimed at committing a crime”, according to the Russian security services (FSB).quoted by Moscow news agencies.
Under these circumstances, “the decision to withdraw the charges was made on June 27 [hoje]the FSB added.
Also this Tuesday, the head of state of Belarus, Vladimir Putin’s main ally, said he had ordered the Minsk army to “prepare for battle” following the Wagner mercenary company’s “uprising” in Russia.
“I have given all orders for the army [da Bielorrússia] be fully combat ready,” Alexander Lukashenko told Belarusian state news agency Belta.
Over the weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads the Wagner group, led a 24-hour armed uprising, with the mercenaries taking the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and advancing as far as 200 kilometers from Moscow.
The uprising ended with an agreement brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, according to the Kremlin, that Prigozhin be sent into exile in Belarus in exchange for immunity for himself and his mercenaries.
Yevgeny Prigozhin justified the group’s “uprising” on Monday with the need to “save” the organization, dismissing an attempted coup and adding that 30 of its mercenaries died in clashes with Russian soldiers.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech broadcast on Russian television on Monday, accused those responsible for the uprising of being traitors and said their actions only benefited Ukraine and its allies.
Source: DN
