The Pentagon is unsure whether Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin came to Belarus after his rebellion, suggesting he uses doubles to hide his movements. On this subject reported Friday, July 7, The New York Times (NYT) newspaper, quoting an anonymous representative of the US military department.
According to a source linked to “sensitive intelligence”, after the end of the events of June 23 and 24, Prigozhin spent most of the time in Russia.
The day before, July 6, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told reporters that Prigozhin was in Russia. “As for Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg … Where is he this morning? Maybe he went to Moscow in the morning,” he said according to BelTA. A few days earlier, on June 27, Lukashenko said that Prigozhin was in Belarus.
Later Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov declaredthat the Kremlin “has neither the capacity nor the inclination” to follow the movements of the founder of the Wagner group.
According to Fontanka, on July 4, Prigozhin personally went to the FSB department in St. Petersburg to collect the weapons seized during the June 24 searches.
Read more about where Prigozhin was and what he did after the attempted rebellion in Russian media’s material.
Earlier, Fontanka, Izvestia and the Rossiya 1 TV channel showed footage taken during a search of a mansion believed to belong to Prigozhin. The images showed, among other things, wads of cash, wigs and fake passports with a photo of the PMC founder under different names. The Interior Ministry and other law enforcement agencies did not comment on these shootings, Prigozhin himself also did not make a statement about it, Remarks “Kommersant”.
Then anonymous telegram channels distributed photographs of Prigozhin in various forms – a military officer from Sudan, a diplomat from Abu Dhabi, a senior lieutenant from Syria. The Telegram channel “Attention, the news” suggested that these photos were also obtained during the searches of the leader of the “Wagnerians”, and that Prigozhin used different identities to work for Wagner abroad.
On June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has repeatedly criticized the leadership of the Defense Ministry, accused the military department of bombing the positions of its fighters and announced a “march of justice” to Moscow. Russian authorities called it an armed rebellion. A criminal case has been opened against Prigogine. On June 24, the Wagnerians occupied military installations in Rostov-on-the-Don and traveled several hundred kilometers towards Moscow. In the evening of the same day, Prigozhin deployed the fighters after negotiations with Lukashenko. The case against Prigozhin was dismissed, the Kremlin said he would leave for Belarus. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “Wagnerians” had several options to continue their action: sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense, go to Belarus or leave the service with relatives.
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