Wagner chief Prigozhin who rebelled against Vladimir Putin has a body double?

Lithuania’s counterintelligence service that a passport which was found during a search of Russian offices of mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was used by his double to enter Lithuania in 2020.

The aim of the body double, the service said, was to foment a scandal in the country. This comes as Wagner chief Prigozhin flew into exile in Belarus under a deal that ended a mutiny by his fighters against Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Russian media outlet fontanka.ru published pictures purportedly taken during a Russian security service raid of the headquarters of Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group in St Petersburg. These showed passports under his name but were later deleted.

A photo in one of the passports appears to match a picture released in 2021 by Lithuania’s counterintelligence State Security Department of a man said to have traveled under his name.

“The passport, issued to Prigozhin’s double, was used in 2020 for an informational attack against Lithuania,” the security service said in a Facebook post, as per news agency Reuters.

The aim was to undermine European solidarity by making it seem as though Prigozhin himself had defied sanctions to visit EU member Lithuania, it said.

“Lithuanian intelligence assesses that the document proves that the informational attack was executed by subjects controlled by Prigozhin, possibly in concert with the secret services of Russia’s regime,” it added.