The last time the world saw Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, he was sardonically smiling in the back of a 4×4 truck as he left the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, only hours after he had brazenly sworn to march on Moscow and reveal the truth of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since then, the Russian President has announced that the criminal investigation into Prigozhin’s insurrection has been closed and the Wagner chief will be permitted to enjoy peaceful exile in Belarus, the puppet state neighbouring Ukraine, after its president Alexander Lukashenko reportedly brokered a deal to end the chaos.
But obfuscated by disinformation and contrasting reports, it remains unclear what has actually happened to the warlord in the two days since he was last spotted.
A day after the Wagner insurrection on June 24, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private Embraer Legacy 600 jet – registration number RA-02795 – took off from St Petersburg, where the Wagner private military company (PMC) belonging to the warlord opened a new office in November last year.
As it entered the airspace near Rostov Oblast, southern Russian, close to where Prigozhin was last seen, its transponder was suddenly switched off, meaning it could no longer be tracked.
READ MORE Belarus is de facto prison for Prigozhin who ‘won’t ever be safe’ from Putin[REVEAL ]
For reference, a similar incident occurred with Vladimir Putin’s private plane on Saturday (June 24), as it left Moscow while Wagner mercenaries rapidly marched towards the capital.
At around 6pm local time on the same day, the plane reappeared on radar over the Tambov Oblast and returned to St. Petersburg the following hour, according to Belaruski Hayun, a Belarusian activist monitoring group in contact with Express.co.uk.
On Monday morning (June 26), at 7.40am local time, that same plane touched down at the Machulishchy military airfield in Belarus, roughly 12 miles south of the capital of Minsk, where President Alexander Lukashenko was preparing to address journalists and security officials on the Wagner coup of the weekend previous.
Less than 20 minutes later, a second business jet, BAe-125-800B (reg. number RA-02878), having taken off from St Petersburg, landed at the military airfield.
The only other military arrival, an An-124 “Ruslan” transport aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces (RA-82030), departed from Ulyanovsk in Russia on Sunday and landed at Minsk National Airport that same day.
Prigozhin would have needed to travel more than 800 miles from Rostov-on-Don to make that flight, a feat that would only be possible if he could “transport”, according to Belaruski Hayun.
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It was also reported that there were no sightings of the warlord at Minsk National Airport.
While it cannot be confirmed if Prigozhin was on his own plane, this appears to be the only plausible means of his arrival in Belarus, and it is almost always his preferred method of international travel.
What can be concluded, however, with reasonable certainty is that Prigozhin remained in Russia for at least two days after staging the Wagner coup.
Telegram channel BRIEF quotes local sources as saying he had “been in St. Petersburg since Sunday evening, having returned there from Rostov”, as flight tracking previously suggested.
The charge of mounting an armed mutiny is punishable by up to 20 years in prison according to Russian law, but Prigozhin appears to have escaped prosecution.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader who was forced to flee the country after Lukashenko is believed to have undermined the election process and reclaimed power, admitted that her and her team “could not confirm Prigozhin’s” arrival in Belarus but said the warlord’s presence would “create a new source of instability”, both domestically and to Ukraine.
“It is important to understand that the people of Belarus don’t want this war criminal in our country”, she said. “Lukashenka has no legitimacy; he can’t negotiate to bring criminals to our country or broker any deals.
“He does not represent our people. If Prigozhin comes to Belarus, it will create a new source of instability and new threats to our sovereignty and to our neighbours.
“It is also possible that Wagner might establish military bases and attack Ukraine from Belarus. At the moment, we can’t exclude anything.
“Bringing Prigozhin, nuclear weapons and more Russian forces to Belarus only adds to the danger for everyone. Lukashenka is playing a dangerous game and the West must react to it.”
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