Russia’s rebellious mercenary Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin walked free from prosecution for his June 24 armed mutiny, and it’s still unclear if anyone will face any charges in the aborted uprising against military leaders or for the deaths of the soldiers killed in it.
Questions have been raised over his stay in Russia, after the uprising and whether Putin will come after him for the betrayal. Sources suggest he has been given political immunity while he stays in St Petersburg after he returned from his apparent ‘exile’ in Belarus.
Now, Belarussian President Lukashenko has claimed that Putin won’t ‘come after’ Prigozhin and he is ‘completely safe’, which one analyst said is undermining Putin’s power.
A campaign is also underway to portray the founder of the Wagner Group military contractor as driven by greed, with only hints of an investigation into whether he mishandled any of the billions of dollars in state funds.
Until last week, the Kremlin has never admitted to funding the company, with private mercenary groups technically illegal in Russia.
But President Vladimir Putin revealed the state paid Wagner almost $1 billion in just one year, while Prigozhin’s other company earned about the same from government contracts. Putin wondered aloud whether any of it was stolen.
The developments around Prigozhin, who remains unpunished despite Putin’s labeling of his revolt as treason, underscored what St. Petersburg municipal council member Nikita Yuferev called the “gradual erosion of the legal system” in Russia.
On Thursday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Prigozhin was “absolutely free” and Putin would not “wipe him out” defending the Russian President as not “malevolent and vindictive”. However, Dr Yuri Felshtinsky, a US-based author and an expert in Russian affairs, has suggested Lukashenko is now undermining Putin’s power with his comment.
Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, writing about the mutiny in a column, concluded: “The fabric of the state is disintegrating.”
After Putin indicated the government would probe financial irregularities by Prigozhin’s companies, state TV picked up that cue.
Russian media on Wednesday — including popular state TV channel Russia 1 — showed video of searches of Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg offices and an opulent mansion he purportedly owned, complete with helipad and indoor swimming pool.
They also showed a van with boxes of cash, as well as gold bars, wigs and weapons in the estate.
Russia 1 programs also alleged Prigozhin’s adult children amassed significant wealth through him and said the searches were a part of an ongoing investigation, contrasting his lifestyle to his anti-elite image.
“So it turns out, Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t have enough and wanted more?” an anchor mused.
