One of the conditions of the agreement, following which the founder of Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, ended his rebel campaign against Moscow, the Kremlin called for his departure for Belarus. However, according to the media, since then the businessman has been spotted in Russia more than once. Two weeks after the mutiny, neither the Kremlin, nor Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, nor Prigozhin’s own press service gives a definitive answer to the question of his whereabouts. Russian media tells where “a man who looked like Prigojine” was seen after the events of June 24, and how his freedom of movement is explained.
Chronicle of Prigozhin’s alleged movements after the rebellion
Evening June 25
According to the FlightRadar service, the Embraer Legacy 600 (RA-02795) business jet associated with Prigozhin returned from Rostov-on-Don to St. Petersburg.
June 26
By data “Fontanki”, a man resembling Prigozhin, was seen at the Trezzini Hotel in St. Petersburg during a “meeting with subordinates”.
June 27
In the morning, the plane with the number RA-02795 landed at Machulishchi airfield near Minsk, informed monitoring project “Belarusian Gayun”. Soon another plane with the number RA-02878, arriving from St. Petersburg, landed there. Lukashenka confirmed that Prigozhin is in the republic. Peskov declared, which does not have data on the whereabouts of a businessman. In the evening, the two planes took off from Machulishchi for Russia: one for Moscow, the other for Saint Petersburg. It is not known for certain whether Prigogine was on board any of the ships.
June 28
A man who looks like Prigogine seen in his office on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg, writes Fontanka.
June 29
fontanka published photographs of a man wearing a mask and cap at the English Quay heliport in St. Petersburg. The man was picked up by a helicopter allegedly linked to Prigozhin.
June 30th
Telegram channels and media announced the dissolution of Prigozhin’s Patriot Media Holding. According to Izvestia, the businessman himself announced this decision to employees at a meeting in the Vasilyevsky Island office.
Tent camp for possible accommodation of Wagner PMC fighters in the Mogilev region Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP
1st of July
The Embraer Legacy 600 business jet (RA-02795) landed again at Machulishchi.
July 2nd
According to Fontanka, Prigozhin was in Moscow. On the same day, the security forces returned to him through the proxy driver 10 billion rubles seized from facilities linked to the businessman during the mutiny.
4th July
Prigozhin personally went to the FSB department of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region to collect the weapons seized during the searches, according to Fontanka.
July 6
Jet number RA-02795 arrived to the Rostov region. The President of Belarus said that Prigozhin was in Russia. “As for Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg … Where is he this morning? Maybe he went to Moscow, maybe somewhere else, but he is not on the territory of Belarus,” Lukashenko said. Peskov declaredthat the Kremlin does not follow the movements of Prigozhin: “We have neither the opportunity nor the desire.”
July 7
In the Kremlin say againthat they don’t know where the PMC founder “Wagner” is.
“I can’t say anything here, we don’t have any information about it. And I don’t have anything to add to what we said earlier,” the press secretary to the President of Russia said.
Edit “Layout” calculatedthat from June 25 to July 6, “Prigozhin’s plane” made 13 flights: five to St. Petersburg, four to Moscow and two to Minsk and southern Russia: in the Rostov region or in the territory of Krasnodar. According to Financial Times reporter Stephen Bernard, who studied data from FlightRadar24, there were 14 flights during this period. Bernard’s Twitter. The jets moved from St. Petersburg to southern Russia, from there to Minsk, then to Moscow and back to St. Petersburg.
NYT: Prigozhin uses doubles to hide his moves
Most of the time after the rebellion, Prigozhin was in Russia, complaints source The New York Times (NYT) of the US Department of Defense. The Pentagon does not know if he came to Belarus, in part because the businessman apparently uses doubles to hide his movements, according to the source.
Fontanka also wrote that Prigogine could have doubles. After searches of the businessman’s premises, the publication published photographs of passports found by security forces with a photo of Prigozhin, but with different names. The post was later deleted. On July 6, the Rossiya 1 TV channel aired a report about raids on a mansion believed to belong to the founder of Wagner PMC. In addition to weapons, gold bars, cash, and other valuables, there was a closet with wigs and makeup in the house.
Via anonymous telegram channels after research broken selfie of Prigogine in various images. According to the caption that accompanies these images on the channels, the founder of PMC tried on the images of an employee of the Ministry of Defense in Sudan, an assistant to a diplomat from Abu Dhabi and a senior lieutenant from Benghazi.
Why Prigozhin is allowed to move to Russia
A Financial Times (FT) source, who has known Prigozhin since the 1990s, suggestedthat freedom of movement in Russia to settle affairs was part of the deal after which the PMC founder ended his rebellion.
“Looks like he’s just running. Rather, it seems his empire is falling apart and preparations are underway for his departure. When everything calms down, I think he will have problems, but who thinks about the future more than a week in advance? – says the source of the newspaper.
Political scientist, former Vladimir Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov * believes that Prigozhin obtained other concessions, besides the possibility of moving to Belarus. “Of course he wouldn’t have accepted a deal in which he would lose everything,” Gallyamov* said. According to him, any drastic action against the PMC “Wagner” can provoke the fighters or push them to a new rebellion.
“He is humiliated. They decided to kill Prigozhin as a politician, but they are still deciding what to do with him as a businessman,” political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said.
The FT also draws attention to comments by Lukashenko, who said the day before that Putin could have softened his attitude towards Prigozhin. The Belarusian leader, in particular, noted that the Russian president was not “malicious and vindictive” enough to “dunk” the PMC founder.
Vladimir Putin, in his June 26 address, offered Wagner PMC fighters three options: “leave for Belarus”, enter into a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or leave the service with relatives. The scenarios according to which the situation of the “wagnerites” could develop are presented in the Russian media material.
After the resolution of the situation around PMC Wagner, two audio messages from Prigozhin were published on the web (June 26 and July 3). In these, the founder of a private military company did not reveal his whereabouts.
*registered by the Ministry of Justice of Russia in the register of foreign agents
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