The mystery becomes yet more opaque even as the Kremlin tries to clear it up.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s whereabouts have been unclear since he appeared at night in an SUV in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don, at the close of his short-lived, yet seismic, mutiny. We have seen affiliated planes criss-crossing Russian and Belarusian airspace; his purported wigs and gold bars; even a man similar to him in a surgical mask getting off a helicopter in St. Petersburg.
But it is clear from President Alexander Lukashenko’s comments last week that Prigozhin is not – as the deal he said he agreed to with the Kremlin stipulated – in Belarus. Neither are his fighters.
เว็บพนันยูฟ่าเบทน่าเล่นInstead, the Kremlin on Monday tried to provide some clarity, after French newspaper Liberation reported a meeting between Putin and Prigozhin on June 29. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, confirmed in a conference call with journalists the meeting had taken place. He intimated that Putin had met with Wagner’s commanders and discussed further options for their work, and that the president had heard from them that “they were ready to continue to fight for the Motherland.” Peskov added: “That’s all we can say about this meeting. I can’t tell you more.”
It is important to pause and conjure just how surreal the meeting Peskov is describing sounds. That five days after the greatest and most violent threat to Putin’s rule yet, he would invite into the Kremlin the chief mutineer and possibly as many as 30 of his commanders to discuss how they could work.
This would mean that 48 hours after Putin told assembled soldiers inside the Kremlin walls how they had prevented a “civil war,” the Kremlin head had flown to the southern Russian city of Derbent for a photo opportunity, and returned to greet the actual mutineers inside the same Kremlin walls the next day. That meeting was then kept secret for 11 days. Weird, doesn’t even cut it.
