Wagner group has relocated to Belarus ‘for some time’, Yevgeny Prigozhin says

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The Wagner paramilitary group has relocated to Belarus “for some time” before leaving to fight in Africa, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said, adding that the group may later rejoin Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a dimly lit video filmed in a field and posted on Wednesday by a Wagner-linked channel, the warlord welcomed a group of men to Belarus, indicating they had left Russia after staging a failed mutiny against the defence ministry last month.

“What’s happening on the front is a disgrace that we don’t need to take part in. We need to wait for the moment when we can show what we’re worth in full,” Prigozhin said. “So a decision has been taken that we will be here in Belarus for some time.”

Wagner agreed to relocate after Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, brokered an 11th-hour deal to end the group’s rebellion in June against the army, which Prigozhin has accused of mismanaging the war effort.

Prigozhin’s fate, however, had been unclear in the weeks after the failed mutiny. The normally publicity-happy former caterer, known as “Putin’s chef”, appeared to spend several weeks in Russia and even met Putin at a roundtable in the Kremlin.

There, Putin later said, Wagner rejected an offer to continue fighting under its de facto commander in Ukraine, Andrei Troshev, but without direction from Prigozhin.

A highly decorated Wagner fighter who goes by the call-sign “Zombie” later told a pro-war news outlet that Prigozhin and his top underlings retained the men’s loyalty.

“They are the soul and brains of Wagner, they united it with their ideas, bubbling activity and results-oriented approach,” he said. “I’m either in Wagner PMC [private military company] with them, or I’ll gladly relax at home in front of the TV. And that’s what everyone thinks.”

Belarus’s defence ministry posted footage last week of Wagner fighters training local units, claiming that the paramilitaries would secure key infrastructure.

Before their departure, Russian state media showed footage of the defence ministry taking control of what it said was Wagner’s heavy weaponry, indicating they had surrendered it as part of the deal to stand down the mutiny.

Wagner’s new base is near the town of Osipovichi, where Belarus built a tent camp to house them, after anonymous fighters from the group said they had closed their headquarters in Molkino, southern Russia.

Prigozhin’s location when the video was filmed was not immediately clear.

Prigozhin said Wagner would “make the Belarusian army the second army in the world and stick up for them if we have to” before “gathering our strength and heading off for Africa”, where the group has fought in proxy conflicts as mercenaries for years.

“We may return to [fight in Ukraine] when we will be certain that we won’t be made to disgrace ourselves and our experience,” Prigozhin added.

The video then showed a man who said he was Dmitry Utkin, Wagner’s top commander, telling the men that their work had only just begun.

“Thanks to you, the name of Wagner PMC has made waves all over the world. This is not the end. This is only the start of a big job that we’re going to do very soon. Welcome to hell,” he added.