Global Courant
There were 12 hours of tension, which began with a request for help from the Kremlin to Minsk at 8 in the morning on Saturday.
Between insults, demands and concessions, negotiations took place between the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, to put an end to the uprising of the Russian paramilitary group against the military elite, over the weekend in Russia.
In a speech offered to the Belarusian military, Lukashenko offered a chronology of these events throughout Saturday:
-08.00: alarming information
“Alarming information is beginning to arrive about the situation in Russia,” according to Lukashenko, who was informed by the Federal Security Service and the Committee for State Security that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to speak to him.
The Wagner group takes the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Photo: Reuters
-10.10 am: Putin ready to crush the rebels
Putin reports “exhaustively on the situation taking place in Russia,” said Lukashenko, who asked his Russian counterpart “not to rush,” as Putin was willing to “crush” the rebels. Lukashenko convinces him to enter into negotiations with Prigozhin.
The head of the Kremlin also assured that the Wagner Chief did not answer the phone and did not want to speak to anyone.
11:00 a.m.: Prigozhin answers the phone
The Belarusian president asks Putin how to communicate with Prigozhin and establishes three channels of communication with Wagner’s boss around noon: “He responded immediately.”
Prigozhin expresses his demands very excited: “the first round of talks lasted 30 minutes with only swear words. There were ten times more bad words than normal lexicon,” says Lukashenko.
Wagner’s chief demands the handover of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov, whom he accuses of having betrayed Russia and of being responsible for the deaths of thousands of soldiers in Ukraine.
He also asks for an appointment with Putin.
Lukashenko replies that “no one will hand over Shoigu or Gerasimov under these conditions.”
“You know Putin as well as I do, he is not going to meet with you or answer you on the phone in these circumstances,” he told him.
Lukashenko’s threat
After two rounds of talks, Lukashenko understands that Prigozhin is ready to give up his demands and alerts him that if at least one civilian dies, they will end the negotiations immediately.
In addition, he warned him that if the Wagnerites’ advance towards Moscow continued, Minsk would send a brigade to defend the Russian capital “as in 1941”, in reference to World War II.
Meanwhile, the Russian regular forces prepared several lines of defense with more than 10,000 troops in order to defend Moscow.
Lukashenko warns Wagner’s boss that the uprising could cause bloodshed and that Russia has enough forces to “squash him like a bug” despite the fact that the Russian army “is busy on the front” with Ukraine.
16.00: 200 km from Moscow, Prigozhin accepts the conditions
Prigozhin tells Lukashenko that he is willing to accept the conditions and asks him for advice on how to avoid an attack by Russian regular forces against the mercenary column, already 200 kilometers from Moscow.
The Belarusian president establishes contacts with the director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB), Alexandr Bórtnikov, to coordinate the withdrawal of the Wagnerites.
It also offers “total security guarantees” to Wagner’s boss, which includes transfer to Belarus for him and his fighters.
20.00 hs: final
At approximately 8:00 p.m. the talks conclude. Prigozhin coordinates with Bortnikov to withdraw his men. The column of the Wagner group turns around and begins the return to its bases from Moscow and the city of Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, which the Wagnerites had taken under their control.
EFE
ap
