From our correspondent
KIEV – already killed, or a refugee in Belarus, or a deserter in disguise to avoid assassins, quiet in his St. Petersburg offices, but perhaps still among his fighters in the Rostov enclave, from where he was going to go to the capital in the last days of Russia to meet Putin in person: What happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin?

in three weeks Since the failed coup in Moscow, the dark saga of mercenary militia leader Wagner becomes the destabilizing metaphor for the uncertainties and fragility gripping the Russian system. Weakness now also reflected in international relations: South Africa is putting subtle pressure on Putin to avoid attending the BRICS summit in mid-August (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to avoid having to violate the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court.

In any case, there is no particular news about Prigozhin, and therefore all rumors and half-tracks become the subject of speculation. yesterday A photo of her appeared on Wagner’s social channels, in which he is described in a militia camp in Belarus. “Prigozhin early in the morning two days ago,” they wrote on Telegram, without providing other concrete evidence. President Lukashenko denied a few days ago that he was in his country.

He also talks about put it inwhich in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant He tells for the first time that after Wagner’s armed insurrection ceased on July 24 200 km from Moscow, it was he himself who invited Prigozhin to his office. The meeting will then take place on July 29 with 34 other senior militia officers. At that juncture, the Russian president, who in the most dangerous hours of the coup, publicly declared his firm intention to “punish the traitors,” declared It was alleged that he offered the rebels to continue serving in the same capacity as before Under the command of one of their officers, Andrei Troshev, known for his activity in Syria since the creation of Wagner in 2014. With statements that seem to want to sideline Prigozhin, Putin specifies that he rejected the offer immediately, without realizing that behind her back many officers wanted to accept it. That the interview is indeed a means of announcing the end of the Wagner leader, but without overthrowing him The role of the militia, which continues to operate profitably for the regime between Africa and the Middle East?

What is clear, however, is that Wagner It no longer plays any relevant role in the ranks of the Russian army deployed in Ukraine. A Pentagon spokesman said last night that the militia no longer has any weight in military operations and that its mercenaries have now been integrated into regular units. The same remark was made to us in the past two weeks by Ukrainian officers, who are operating on the Bakhmut front, in the Donbass, where From June 2022 to last May, Prigozhin and his best units took the lion’s share.

“It must be said Today Wagner is no longer there. This seemed to facilitate the work of the Russian commands, who in recent months had been continually troubled by the jealousy and contests between Wagner and the regular units. Moreover, we no longer see single-use soldiers, former prisoners of the Wagner Division who died like flies on the first charge, ”they explained.