The Kremlin said Thursday that it is not following the movements of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is said to have gone into exile in Belarus after the failed riots on June 24, but whom Minsk guarantees is currently in Russia.
“No. We don’t go through the motions [de Prigozhin]. We don’t have the time or the will to do it,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the usual morning press conference.
Earlier, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, claimed that the leader of the mercenary group is currently in Russia.
“As far as Prigozhin is concerned, he is in Pietro [São Petersburgo]. It is not on Belarusian territory,” Lukashenko said at a meeting with foreign and Belarusian media.
Peskov refused to answer the question of whether Prigozhin is violating the terms of the pact reached with the Kremlin at the end of June, insisting that he could add nothing to what had already been said.
A week ago, the Belarusian leader assured that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus under the agreement that put an end to the armed rebellion led by Russian mercenaries on June 24 and mediated by Lukashenko.
The Russian newspaper Fontanka wrote the day before that Wagner’s head was seen on the 4th of this month in Saint Petersburg, where a pistol and other weapons seized during a police search were returned to him.
Source: TSF
