Lukashenko: Putin wanted to kill Prigozhin but I talked him out of it

As we all know, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “march for justice” (aka the coup) stopped on Saturday just over 100 kilometers from Moscow. We also know that it was Belarus strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko who was on the phone negotiating the deal that eventually got him to stop. But until today that was really all we knew.

This morning, Lukashenko made a speech in which he gave a more detailed version of how the negotiations developed. According to Lukashenko, it started with an exasperated Putin who called and informed him what was happening. “I…understood that a tough decision had been made, you could hear it beneath Putin’s speech: To wipe them out,” Lukashenko said. But he added, “I advised Putin not to rush.”

At some point he said he told Putin they could definitely kill Prigozhin but then they would have to kill everyone who was angry about him being killed and at some point they’d wind up killing civilians as well.

Lukashenko about Prigozhin:
“That’s why I thought we can certainly kill him. I even said to Putin, We can kill him. It’s not a problem. Maybe not on the first try, but on the second.” 👀#Prigozhin #WagnerCoup #RussianArmy #Russia #Wagner #PrigozhinCoup #Belarus #Lukaschenko… pic.twitter.com/zz4EtCqTU5

— Natalka (@NatalkaKyiv) June 27, 2023

So armed with this foresight, Lukashenko said it was better to try and talk to Prigozhin. Putin allegedly replied that it was no use because Prigozhin wouldn’t pick up his phone. But Lukashenko said he told Putin “better a bad peace is better than a good fight” and vowed to try reaching Prigozhin.

Eventually, Lukashenko did get hold of Prigozhin by phone. Here’s how he described their first conversation. “We talked mostly in swear words. Almost only swear words. Later it occurred to me that there were ten times more swear words than normal words,” he said. He continued, “He said ‘We want justice! They want to strangle us! We will march on Moscow!’ And I said ‘Halfway to [Moscow] they will squash you like a bug.’”

Of course we don’t know how accurate. A lot of it seems to be Lukashenko patting himself on the back. That said, Prigozhin did eventually stop his march.

Mr. Lukashenko did not go into detail on the specific negotiations over the deal they reached, which allowed Mr. Prigozhin to go to Belarus and included the dropping of a criminal case against him and his fighters. Wagner fighters were given the choice of joining him in Belarus or being incorporated into the Russian military.

It was unclear on Tuesday whether any Wagner fighters had arrived in Belarus. Mr. Lukashenko suggested that it might take some time for the Wagner members who chose not to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense to travel to Belarus. He also said he told his defense minister to explore the idea of bringing some of them into the Belarusian Army.

Mr. Lukashenko said that he offered Wagner group members an “abandoned” military base in the country, but claimed that no camps were being built especially for the mercenary fighters. Earlier Tuesday, Latvia and Lithuania, which both border Belarus, called on NATO to strengthen its eastern borders because of what they said was the possible creation of Wagner bases.

For the moment it looks like everyone is sticking to the agreement. Prigozhin is now in Minsk and the investigation into his march has been dropped by the FSB. However, Putin did make a speech today saying that the Kremlin had spent about a billion dollars supporting Wagner.

‼️Putin admits Wagner is entirely financed by the state budget.
Does it mean that Russia qualifies as a state sponsor of terrorism …or not yet?
🤔🤔🤔

P.S. Putin’s numbers don’t add up… as always!

P.P.S. I wonder how Russians without indoor plumbing feel about these… pic.twitter.com/kwbC1wlWT2

— Natalka (@NatalkaKyiv) June 27, 2023

Did you catch that part at the end? Putin hopes no one was stealing any of that money.

After enumerating Prigozhin’s billion-dollar wartime profits, Putin vaguely warned of possible consequences for officials affiliated with him. “I hope that in the course of this work, no one stole anything — or, let’s say, didn’t steal much — but we will certainly get to the bottom of this,” Putin said.

It sounds as if Putin is warning that there are other investigations that could still result in serious trouble for anyone deemed to have crossed a line. In Putin’s Russia that would be whoever he decides to punish. So maybe he’s technically going to forgive Wagner for the march on Moscow but then throw a bunch of people in jail for financial crimes. It’s a situation still very much in flux.

Here’s part of Lukashenko’s speech:

Hard to know how much of what Lukashenko says here is true, but him describing his phone call with a hotheaded Vladimir Putin on Saturday is deeply amusing for some reason. In Batka’s version of events, he singlehandedly stopped Putin from bringing down hellfire on Prigozhin. pic.twitter.com/94ysCi6iEG

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) June 27, 2023