Russian President Vladimir Putin has said for years that he can forgive anything except treason. The coming weeks will show what the future of Yevgeny Prigozhin will look like – estimates the director of the Center for Eastern Studies, Wojciech Konończuk.
According to media reports, the head of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is currently in Minsk.
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Questions about the future of Prigozhin
Director of the Center for Eastern Studies Wojciech Konończuk in a Thursday interview with PAP when asked about Prigożyn’s future on Belarus considered it to be a temporary solution. In his opinion, the coming weeks should show what the political and “physical” future of the commander of the Wagner Group will be.
– I don’t think that Prigozhin wants to stay longer in Belarus, because it is limiting for him. It is rather a question of how quickly Putin will get him and how soon Putin will have the opportunity to, colloquially speaking, thank him for what he did over the weekend, said Konończuk.
When asked if there is any doubt that the president Russia he will want to take revenge on the rebel, he replied that it was only a matter of time. “Especially considering Putin’s words in several interviews in recent years, when he said that he was able to forgive anything except treason,” he added.
Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves Rostov-on-Don. Photo from June 24 ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / Reuters / Forum
With the tacit approval of part of the elite
According to Konońchuk, the imposition of possible revenge depends on what the future will look like and how stable the Putin regime will continue to be, and on how strong the “patrons of Prigozhin” present in the Kremlin leadership will turn out to be.
– Prigozhin probably acted with the tacit consent of part of the elite, who treated him instrumentally, as a kind of battering ram, perhaps not so much to overthrow the Putin regime as to weaken it and show him that he made a number of strategically wrong decisions for which he must pay – he assessed .
Vladimir Putin delivered a speech after the Wagner Group revolt. “Either way this armed rebellion would have been crushed”Katarzyna Sławińska/Fakty TVN
The retreat of the Wagnerians
On Saturday evening, Prigozhin announced a retreat and the withdrawal of mercenaries to field camps to “avoid bloodshed”. This was supposed to be the result of a deal between the Belarusian authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenko and Prigozhin, concluded in an agreement with Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov he informed then that in accordance with these arrangements, the mercenaries of the Wagner Group and Prigozhin himself would leave for Belarus.
Main photo source: PAP/EPA