The Lithuanian State Defence Council agreed to devote more intelligence capabilities to assessing the situation in Belarus, President Gitanas Nausėda said on June 25. LRT.lt reports that the move comes in response to the Kremlin’s statements that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that tried to stage a mutiny in Russia over the weekend, will have to leave for Belarus as part of a deal to reduce tensions. Wagner’s aborted revolt marked the most serious challenge yet to Vladimir Putin’s long rule and Russia’s most serious security crisis since he came to power in 1999.
The president-chaired State Defence Council decided that “even more intelligence capabilities have to be devoted to assessing our eastern border and the political and security aspects of Belarus, not forgetting, of course, the Kaliningrad region”, Nausėda told journalists. The president said it was also important to accelerate the adoption of “a new border cover plan” to ensure that the Armed Forces can come to the aid of border guards in an efficient and timely manner. He told reporters that “After yesterday’s challenges, we can expect all sorts of scenarios because we are dealing with a regime that is beginning to show its weakness”.
In response to the recent Wagner mercenary group’s aborted mutiny in Russia, Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry has once again recommended that Lithuanian citizens not travel to Russia and Belarus, and urged citizens of Lithuania who are currently temporarily in Russia and Belarus to leave the country as soon as possible. Lithuanian citizens ignoring the Foreign Ministry’s recommendations and travelling to Belarus and Russia endanger their own safety, health, and life. “The situation is constantly changing, therefore, we ask citizens in these countries to be vigilant in public places, avoid mass events, and follow the information published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.”
More about Prigozhin: a Russian oligarch, mercenary chief, and a former close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until he launched attempted a coup. Prigozhin is sometimes called “Putin’s chef”, as he owns restaurants and catering companies that provided services for the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin now controls a network of influential companies, including the Russian state-backed mercenary company Wagner Group and three companies accused of interference in the 2016 and 2018 US elections.
