Lukashenko is afraid of Wagner PMC

"The Wagner soldiers started to bother us, asking to go to the West, 'let us. ...We will go on an excursion to Warsaw and Rzeszow. ...They know where the military equipment came from. ...Of course, I keep them in the center of Belarus, as we agreed, because I would not like to relocate them there, because they are in a bad mood. We will do everything we can to counteract this. And I ask that you also consider this issue in your country."

In my opinion, this does not look like blackmailing Europe or NATO. And what kind of blackmail? How many Wagner soldiers were there at Bakhmut? About 100,000 (because officially, more than 21,000 were killed and more than 60,000 wounded - and about 1/4 managed to crawl out in one piece)? So what? They lost up to 3/4 of their personnel in recoverable and irrecoverable losses (by their own admission) in order to move a few kilometers and destroy the city in 3/4 years, and the ruins of the city are now being slowly reclaimed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Wagner PMC's ability to fight not against the Armed Forces, but against NATO, was shown very well by the United States in Africa. How long did it take to completely resolve the Wagner issue there - one hour? That's it. What can 5,000-20,000 soldiers do in NATO and already mobilized Poland? So this is not blackmail.

"To be more precise, it is neither NATO nor Europe that is the target audience of Lukashenko's crude provocation. In my opinion, it was aimed exclusively at Putin. Lukashenko is using such crude methods of probing to finally find out Putin's real plans and intentions: regarding Belarus, the war, nuclear weapons, and the Wagner Group itself."

Because Lukashenko is apparently simply afraid. What's he not to be afraid of? The Wagner PMC delivered an ultimatum to the Kremlin, marched a couple of hundred kilometers, reached a warehouse with small nuclear warheads, stirred up the army, civilians and security forces, and disposed of 15 Russian military personnel and a couple of new military helicopters... And what? Nothing: Prigozhin calmly drove to St. Petersburg, took his property, and shut down his activities. No criminal cases, no prosecution, no serious discrediting (Medvedev's remarks do not count). In other words, Prigozhin can still be considered Putin's man, and Wagner can still be considered a Putin-controlled army. And all of this is now right at Lukashenko's doorstep. He did not and does not trust Putin and his intentions.

"It is obvious that no one will lay down their lives to protect Lukashenko in case of emergency. No one will cover the road to the residence - all the security forces stationed in the districts along the road will suddenly "disappear" or "fall ill"... No one will die for Lukashenko. And what can Lukashenko oppose to 5,000-20,000 (according to various sources) militants around the perimeter of his palace? The small handful of tributaries who benefit from his rule? It's not even funny."

That is, Lukashenko, in fact, on unknown terms, accepted the Wagner from Putin for trusted storage as a mine with an unlocked hidden timer: whether it will explode or not, when it will explode, whom it will destroy... And he is not willing to take any more risks.

Therefore, Lukashenko chose a public provocation (rather than a private conversation) in order to finally get rid of these obligations. To throw Putin like a hot potato - that's it, let him figure it out for himself.

At a critical moment, Lukashenko agreed to be a temporary solution to the Wagner problem in Russia. But the critical moment has clearly passed, and the Wagner PMC is still in Belarus in an unclear status and with unclear loyalty. Therefore, Lukashenko issued a statement that he was barely keeping the predator on a leash, so the owner should continue to take care of controlling the animal - where it will break out and who it will attack.

Source

About the author. Oleksiy Holobutsky, political scientist.

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