Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said he warned Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin twice to watch out for threats to his life.
The Belarusian leader’s comments came just days after a plane believed to be carrying Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary group Wagner, crashed in a field northwest of Moscow while en route to St. Petersburg.
The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin launched a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, posing an unprecedented challenge to the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It is not clear yet what caused the crash, but western intelligence officials believe it was deliberate while the Kremlin on Friday denied any involvement in the plane crash.
While no evidence has been presented that points to the involvement of Putin or Russian security services, it could be very hard to find the truth out as the crash occured in Russian territory and investigation is being carried out by Russian authorities.
“The first time was when I phoned him and negotiations (were taking) place while they were marching on Moscow,” Lukashenko told reporters in comments carried by Belarusian state news agency Belta on Friday.
“I told him: ‘Yevgeny, do you understand that you will doom your people and will perish yourself?’ He had just come back from the front. On an impulse he said: ‘I will die then, damn it!”
The Belarusian leader said that during second time he spoke with Prigozhin he warned him “in no uncertain terms to watch it.”
Lukashenko did not say when the meeting took place. He added that Dmitriy Utkin, a long-term lieutenant of Prigozhin’s, had come alongside Prigozhin.
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