“Welcome guys! I am happy to greet you all. Welcome to the Belarusian land! We fought with dignity! We have done a lot for Russia,” a person resembling and sounding like Prigozhin says within the video, which was posted in a single day on pro-Wagner Telegram channels on Wednesday after which shared on Prigozhin’s account.
Prigozhin’s rebel posed one of many largest challenges to the lengthy rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He performed a distinguished function within the invasion of Ukraine and because the rebellion his whereabouts have been unclear.
In the video, a fighter seemingly addresses the Wagner chief as “Yevgeny Viktorovich”, Prigozhin’s first title and patronymic. The video seems unedited and metadata on the file suggests it may have been created at nightfall on Tuesday, July 18 or at daybreak on Wednesday, July 19.
The video is grainy and filmed in low gentle. CNN says it can’t definitively be mentioned the speaker is Prigozhin or when it was filmed. CNN was working to geolocate the footage, it mentioned.
In the video, the Wagner chief criticised the Russian Ministry of Defence’s planning and execution of navy operations in Ukraine, and instructed that his troopers wouldn’t combat in Ukraine for now.
“What is happening now at the front is a disgrace in which we do not need to participate. We need to wait for the moment when we can prove ourselves fully,” Prigozhin mentioned. “Therefore a decision was taken for us to station here in Belarus for some time. I am sure that during this time we will make the Belarusian army second greatest in the world. And if needed, we will defend them if it comes to it.”
“I want to ask everyone to really pay attention to the fact that Belarusians welcomed us not only as heroes, but also as brothers,” he added.
The Wagner founder goes on to counsel their keep in Belarus could possibly be short-term and calls on his fighters to arrange to journey elsewhere.
“We should prepare, get better and set off on a new journey to Africa,” he mentioned. “Maybe we will return back [to Ukraine] when we will be confident that we will not be asked to make an embarrassment of ourselves and our experience.”
Belarusian chief Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have brokered the deal between Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin which ended the revolt. Since then, Lukashenko has invited Wagner forces into Belarus to assist prepare his nation’s navy.
Wagner fighters arrived in Belarus on Tuesday, a CNN evaluation of satellite tv for pc imagery and social media movies discovered. The first convoy of Wagner forces arrived at a beforehand disused navy base in Belarus, with no less than two extra convoys on the transfer in the direction of it.
The destiny of Wagner chief Prigozhin, in the meantime, remained topic to hypothesis.
After the mutiny ended, Lukashenko claimed Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus. But for weeks, nobody may verify that. Then earlier this month, Lukashenko reversed himself, telling CNN that Prigozhin was in St Petersburg and is perhaps touring “to Moscow or elsewhere”.
The head of Mi6 mentioned Wednesday that Prighozin was alive and at liberty.
He additionally claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin had no selection however to succeed in an settlement with the Wagner chief with a purpose to finish the short-lived rebel, saying he “cut a deal to save his skin.”
Source: www.9news.com.au
