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Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has arrived in Belarus, the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko said Tuesday, days after the mercenaries’ 36-hour military insurrection posed an unprecedented challenge to the authority of Russia’s leadership.
“I see that Prigozhin is already flying on this plane. Yes, indeed, he is in Belarus today,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian state TV Tuesday.
Prigozhin’s exact whereabouts are unknown. The warlord hasn’t been seen in any videos or photos since he left the Rostov-on-Don military headquarters Saturday evening.
However, satellite imagery by global monitoring company BlackSky shows two planes linked to Prigozhin landed at a Belarusian airbase outside the country’s capital on Tuesday morning.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 indicated the planes landed near Minsk at around 8 a.m. local time. Both planes had their transponders turned off before landing, obscuring their exact landing location.
Two sources – a senior European intelligence official and a source familiar with Prigozhin’s planes – confirmed the jets are linked to the Wagner boss but did not know if he was on board.
Questions over Prigozhin’s whereabouts have been circling for days, since the Wagner chief’s short-lived rebellion triggered a weekend of chaos for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Saturday, troops from Prigozhin’s private military group seized control of a military base and moved in convoy toward Moscow, facing little resistance, in a remarkable and unexpected challenge to the Kremlin leader.
The march was suddenly called off when a supposed deal was struck that would see Prigozhin move to neighboring Belarus.
Though Putin said Saturday those on “path of treason” or armed rebellion would be punished, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) later announced it was dropping the criminal case against the Wagner paramilitary group.
Then on Monday, Putin thanked Wagner fighters for making the “right decision” to halt their advance and offered them three options: sign contracts with the Defense Ministry or other law enforcement agencies, return home or “go to Belarus.
