MOSCOW—Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that he convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin not to "wipe out" mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin in reaction to what the Kremlin perceived as a rebellion.
Prigozhin and some of his men were granted permission to travel to Belarus when a compromise was reached, despite Putin's original vow to put an end to the mutiny and comparisons to the unrest during the First World War that sparked the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war.
On Tuesday, Prigozhin took a flight from Russia to Belarus. Lukashenko used the Russian criminal slang term for killing someone, akin to the English word "wipe out," while discussing his Saturday talk with Putin.
“I also understood: a brutal decision had been made (and it was the undertone of Putin’s address) to wipe out” the mutineers, Lukashenko told a meeting of his army officials and journalists on Tuesday, according to Belarusian state media.
“I suggested to Putin not to rush. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Let’s talk with Prigozhin, with his commanders.’ To which he told me: ‘Listen, Sasha, it’s useless. He doesn’t even pick up the phone, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”
The Kremlin did not respond right away to Lukashenko's statements, which provide a rare glimpse into the discussions taking place there while, in Putin's own words, Russia teetered on the brink of unrest unseen in decades.
Prigozhin's longtime friend and close ally Lukashenko claimed he had counseled Putin to look "beyond our own noses" and that the removal of Prigozhin may spark a general uprising by his warriors.
The Belarusian leader said that Wagner forces, who are now allowed to enter Belarus according to an agreement reached with the Kremlin, might help his own army by sharing their knowledge.
“This is the most trained unit in the army,” the BelTA state agency quoted Lukashenko as saying. “Who will argue with this? My military also understands this, and we don’t have such people in Belarus.”
Later Lukashenko told his military that “people fail to understand that we are approaching this in a pragmatic way … They’ve (Wagner) been through it, they’ll tell us about the weaponry—what worked well, which worked badly.”
After Lukashenko's intervention, Prigozhin stopped what he described as a "march of justice" into Moscow from the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, which was just 200 kilometers away.
