Lukashenko's Remarks Raise Questions About Putin's Absence During Mutiny

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko boasted about his role in ending the march on Moscow by Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin's during a speech that highlighted President Vladimir Putin's absence from the crisis.

Lukashenko gave his account of Saturday's events, which saw the mercenary group, key to Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, seize military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and head towards the capital to oust the Russian military leadership he has long condemned.

The ally of Putin told reporters on Tuesday that he advised the Russian leader "not to hurry" and talk with Prigozhin and his commanders. Putin said this idea was "useless," according to Lukashenko, because the Wagner chief "doesn't even pick up the phone, doesn't want to talk to anyone."

This contradicts Russian sources who said it was Putin who refused to speak to Prigozhin. Lukashenko said that when he got hold of Prigozhin, he warned him he would be "crushed like a bug" if his troops continued their advance to the Russian capital.

Lukashenko said that apart from Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), "no one participated in these negotiations," suggesting that Putin was not involved.

The Belarusian leader said Prigozhin had called him to accept the conditions for calling it off but feared that they would be fired on.

"I have to take what Lukashenko is saying and face value—it's just too strange not to be true," said Matt Dimmick, a former United States National Security Council (NSC) director for Russia and Eastern Europe.

"He probably offered a decent service in the process and kept these two actors who were headed for a major bloodbath to back off from the brink," he told Newsweek.

The Russian-language pro-Ukrainian news outlet Politika Strani said that during his speech, Lukashenko presented Putin and members of the Russian authorities as "eccentric, emotionally immature teenagers, ready to strangle each other" during the crisis.

"But here the wise father appears and reconciles everyone, saving Russia from civil war and collapse," added the outlet which reports on the war in Ukraine.

Lukashenko's account showed him mediating a crisis "within Putin's own inner circle that Putin could not," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.

"Lukashenko's boasting about his ability to manipulate power brokers within Putin's innermost circle is humiliating for Putin, whether or not it is true," the U.S.-based think tank said on Tuesday.

"The fact that Putin has not challenged Lukashenko's presentation of events and has in fact publicly thanked Lukashenko is even more humiliating," it added, although the Kremlin, which Newsweek has contacted for comment, has not corroborated the Belarusian leader's account.

It is safe to assume that Putin regards Prigozhin as his subordinate not his equal, so it would not be surprising that it was not reported that the Russian leader was negotiating with the Wagner boss.

But there were questions from milbloggers over the absence of a coordinated response from Russian authorities during the biggest crisis of the presidency of Vladimir Putin, who was not seen between Saturday and Monday.

"They're not incentivized or set up to do rapid information sharing," said Dimmick. "It might be too early to draw conclusions about whether that reflects Putin's lack of grip or it just took him that long for the apparatus to figure out exactly what they were dealing with."

The terms of the deal Prigozhin struck are unclear, but they reportedly include the dropping of criminal charges against him and his fighters, as well as his exile to Belarus.

Satellite images purporting to show the construction of a Wagner camp near the town of Asipovichy, around 60 miles southeast of the capital Minsk, were reported by independent Belarusian media.

"A certain number will go with him, it all depends on the hard-core element with Wagner," said Dimmick. "He's got several thousand that are very loyal and share his disgust with how the Russian Ministry of Defense has been waging this war."