Laurynas Kasčiūnas, conservative MP and chairman of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence told Baltic News Services that the internal challenges Wagner will face after the death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin may divert the military company’s attention away from Lithuania. Most news sources agree that the plane crash of August 23rd, killing Prigozhin and a number of his staff was Putin’s revenge for the insurrection the mercenary led in Russia at the end of June, ending in a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, under which Prigozhin and some of his fighters were to move to Belarus. Some of the fighters did go to Belarus. Minsk claims that Wagner members are training Belarusian soldiers there. Lithuanian officials raised concerns that Wagner’s presence in the neighbouring country posed security risks, leading to proposals to put additional restrictions on migration from Belarus.
According to Lithuanian and Polish data, there are currently about 4,000 Wagner troops stationed in Belarus, some of them close to the Lithuanian and Polish borders. The commander of the State Border Guard Service claims that the number of mercenaries could reach 4,500. Regarding the group’s future, Kasčiūnas speculated that “to transform themselves, to support missions in Africa, to use Belarus as a kind of training ground, a rotational territory – that is possible”.
With regard to Lithuanian security, President Gitanas Nausėda said in Kyiv on August 24 that “Prigozhin’s death, if it is indeed confirmed, does not change much” He is convinced that one of the goals of Wagner’s mercenaries is to destabilize the situation in the region and try to stage provocations.
Some sources are casting doubt as to the fact of Prigozhin’s death. Most agree that it could only have occurred with the full knowledge of Russian secret service, and signals the end of of the Wagner group’s activities. Russia’s aviation agency identified the seven passengers killed in the crash as Prigozhin and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, Sergei Propustin, Yevgeny Makaryan, Alexander Totmin, Valery Chekalov and Nikolai Matuseyev.
According to Politico.eu, Western officials and Russian dissidents have few doubts that this was an assassination ordered from the very top. Prigozhin’s ties with the Russian leader went back before Putin became president. The pair became business friends in the city in the 1990s, when Putin was a rising political star and chief aide to Anatoly Sobchak — the city’s first post-Soviet mayor and onetime Boris Yeltsin rival. Prigozhin co-owned a variety of construction, marketing, catering and gambling businesses.
Prigozhin rose with Putin, securing lucrative government catering contracts, feeding school children and government workers, and supplying meals to the Russian military, hence his nickname “Putin’s Chef.” In turn, he was useful for the Kremlin in waging information war. Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency is said to have churned out disinformation, trying to influence elections overseas — including the 2016 presidential race in the United States, as well as across Europe and Africa.
