'I said to Putin: 'We could waste [Prigozhin], no problem. If not on the first try, then on the second.' I told him: 'Don't do this'," said Aleksander Lukashenko, long-ruling dictator of Belarus, clearly delighted at having upstaged his arrogant Russian counterpart. The worm had turned, and it was the Russian dictator who needed help.
It's barely a week since a column of several hundred military vehicles of Mr Prigozhin's 'Wagner' private army, many of them armoured, was rolling towards Moscow, while various oligarchs took the sensible precaution of flying out to safer places.
But would-be coup leader Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted Mr Lukashenko's offer of sanctuary and is now setting up on an abandoned military base in Belarus. "There is a fence, everything is available, erect your tents," Mr Lukashenko told any of the now homeless Wagner mercenaries who want to follow their leader into a not-very-distant exile.
