Belarus president says Wagner chief in Russia; Kremlin says ‘not following’ Prigozhin’s movements

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko says the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group is no longer in his country but in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

In late June, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his outfit staged a brief mutiny leading a troop convoy towards the Russian capital which he described as a march for justice.

However, the 36-hour mutiny came to an end after Prigozhin agreed, via an agreement brokered by Lukashenko, to turn his troops back from their march to Moscow in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself and his troops.

On Thursday, the president of Belarus told reporters that Prigozhin, who had moved to Belarus, is now in St. Petersburg and his Wagner troops have remained at the camps where they had stayed before the abortive mutiny.

He did not specify the location of the camps, but Prigozhin's private paramiltary troops had been fighting alongside regular Russian forces in Donbas before the mutiny.

During their short mutiny, Prigozhin and his troops quickly swept over the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured military headquarters there before marching on the Russian capital.

The Wagner chief, a former convict, described the move towards Moscow as a “march of justice” to oust the Russian defense minister and the General Staff chief.

The Wagner chief claimed he had a legitimate grievance against Russia's top brass for ordering a rocket attack on Wagner’s field camps in Ukraine -- where Russia has been leading a military operation -- killing "huge numbers” of his paramilitary forces. Authorities in Moscow strongly denied Prigozhin’s claim.

Lukashenko, however, had described the move, not as a mutiny, but instead as an "interpersonal conflict" between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Prigozhin which “escalated into this fight."

Meanwhile, Colonel General Andrei Kartapolov, an influential lawmaker who chairs Russia's lower house of parliament's defense committee, said the combat strength of Russian forces remains high despite the departure of the Wagner private military group, and new recruitment was unnecessary.

Russian combat strength not altered without Wagner: Lawmaker

A senior Russian lawmaker insists that the military

"No new wave of mobilization will be required," Kartapolov said in an interview published on Monday by TASS news agency, adding that Russia’s regular army forces have effectively repulsed Ukraine's latest counteroffensives without Wagner fighters.

Kartapolov pointed out that the withdrawal of Wagner forces posed no risk to Russia's combat potential, "both in the mid-term and long-term perspective."

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 to defend the pro-Russia population from Kiev's persecution and in response to the eastward expansion of the US-led NATO forces.

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