AFP, published Thursday, June 29, 2023 at 10:26 am.
Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigoyine and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are not allies and may be unfaithful to each other, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya told AFP.
“Lukashenko can always betray Prigoyine or Prigoyine can betray Lukashenko. They are not allies. They can’t trust each other,” Tichanovskaya said in an interview on Wednesday.
President Lukashenko announced that Prigozhin arrived in Belarus on Tuesday. The head of the Wagner Group visited this country as part of a negotiated agreement to end his insurgency in Russia.
But Ms Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory over Mr Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, believes there is still a lot of ambiguity about the supposed deal.
In her opinion, Mr Lukashenko’s decision to help President Putin was an act of personal convenience to save his own regime.
“He did not act to save Putin’s face, to save Prigozhin or to prevent a civil war from breaking out in Russia,” she said. “He was only concerned with his personal survival because Lukashenko knows that if factions in Russia clash, he will pay the price.”
She also believes that if the fighters of Prigoyine and Wagner flock to Belarus in large numbers, this could threaten Europe.
“The presence of Prigoyine himself or the Wagner group on our territory primarily poses a threat to the Belarusian people and our independence,” affirms Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa.
“In addition, this presence could pose a threat to Ukraine and our western neighbors,” adds the opposition leader, whose husband is jailed in Belarus.
Yevgeny Prigoyine, a former Kremlin ally and restaurant entrepreneur, built Russia’s most powerful private army and recruited thousands of convicts to fight in Ukraine.
He led an uprising late last week that seemed to shake Vladimir Putin’s grip on Russia.
Ms Tikhanovskaïa denounced that Mr Lukashenko was being portrayed as a “peacemaker” after allegedly helping to resolve the crisis.
– ‘rapist and murderer’ –
And she warns that he could use Wagner’s powers to further quash any disagreements. “He’s the one who brought rapists and murderers into our country,” she accuses him.
“What are these people going to do in our country? That’s the big question. How will they behave?” she asks.
Ms Tikhanovskaya also denounced the West’s “lack of attention” to the situation in her country, which has come under increasing Moscow influence since Vladimir Putin backed Mr Lukashenko.
The lack of a firm response from the international community to Russia’s nuclear arms transfer to Belarus has encouraged Moscow and Minsk, she said.
“We are still awaiting a response to the use of nuclear weapons on our territory. When the world is silent at such an important moment, dictators see it as weakness.”
It has been more than a year since the European Union sanctioned the Belarusian regime for its role in the incursion of Russian troops into Ukraine.
Because of the brutal suppression of the demonstrations, the Europeans had previously imposed several sanctions on Minsk.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa estimates that Mr. Wagner’s arrival in Belarus could encourage the adoption of new punitive measures “for example, against those who allowed it to happen”.
EU member states have been negotiating new sanctions against Minsk for months without reaching an agreement.