Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenkoaffirmed this Thursday that the head of the wagner group,Yevgeny Prigozhin, is currently in Russia and not in Belarus, where he had to go into exile after the failed mutiny against the Russian military leadership. “As for Prigozhin, he is in Píter (St. Petersburg). It is not in Belarusian territory,” Lukashenko said in a meeting with foreign and Belarusian media.

A week ago, the Belarusian leader assured that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus under the deal reached between the Kremlin and the businessman after the armed rebellion led by Russian mercenaries on June 24 and in which Lukashenko mediated.

“You will provided security guarantees, as promised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. (…) Yes, in fact, today he is in Belarus,” he indicated on June 27. That same day, the Belarusian investigative group Gayun reported the arrival of Prigozhin’s private plane in Minsk, although it reported almost fifteen hours after the Embraer Legacy 600 apparatus had returned to Russia.

On the 1st, the same Gayun group, which is dedicated to monitoring military activity in Belarusian territory, noted that Prigozhin’s aircraft had landed again at the Machulishchi military airfield in Minsk.

After spending 7.5 hours in Belarus, Wagner’s boss’s private jet returned from the former Soviet republic, according to the same source. The Russian outlet Fontanka wrote the day before that Prigozhin was seen on July 4 in St. Petersburg, where he was returned a pistol and other weapons seized during a police search.