‘There are no heroes’: Belarus president on Wagner mutiny against Vladimir Putin

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko who had brokered the deal to end the Wagner mutiny said that the mercenaries who rebelled against Russian president Vladimir Putin “very serious ones, are still in the camps they’d withdrawn to after Bakhmut.”

“As for Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s in St Petersburg. Or perhaps this morning he flew to Moscow. Or perhaps he’s somewhere else. But he’s not in Belarus,” he told BBC talking about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin who according to the agreement between the group and the Kremlin was supposed to move to Belarus, along with some of his fighters.

This comes as Moscow and Minsk have differed on their public statements about the Wagner mutiny.

“I think that no-one came out of that situation a hero. Not Prigozhin, not Putin, not Lukashenko. There were no heroes. And the lesson from this? If we create armed groups like this, we need to keep an eye on them and pay serious attention to them,” Alexander Lukashenko said.

What Alexander Lukashenko said on nuclear warheads in Belarus

Talking about nuclear warheads that Russia has said it is moving to Belarus, the leader said, “God forbid I should ever have to take the decision to use them. But I won’t hesitate to use them. Joe Biden could say the same thing, and Prime Minister Sunak. And my friend Xi Jinping and my Big Brother President Putin. In Ukraine a whole army is fighting with foreign weapons, isn’t it. Nato weapons. Because they’ve run out of their own. So why can’t I fight with someone else’s weapons?”

Talked about human rights violations in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko was asked about jailed opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova.

“I don’t know anything about this. There is no article in our criminal code for political crimes. Prisoners cannot be political prisoners, if there’s no article,” he said.