The mercenery leader who led an uprising in Russia at the weekend is holed up in a windowless hotel room in Minsk in an apparent bid to avoid assassination, according to a US intelligence chief.
Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to crush what he called a “treasonous mutiny” after Yevgeny Prigozhin said his Wagner Group fighters had taken control of the southern city of Rostov and were heading to Moscow on a “march for justice”, intended to remove corrupt and incompetent Russian commanders.
Under a deal mediated by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko that defused the crisis late on Saturday, the Kremlin said a criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped and he would move to Belarus.
According to reports, Prigozhin is now “in one of the only hotels in Minsk that doesn’t have any windows”, says US senator and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner.
Appearing on MSNBC, he said: “There have been a number of Russian entity individuals who have run afoul of Putin over the past year-and-a-half, who have mysteriously fallen out of fifth, sixth, seventh floor windows.
“So if he is in Minsk in a hotel with no windows, that would show at least what his mindset is in terms of how his relationships are with Putin at the minute.”
Nearly 25 Russian businessmen met their end during 2022 in what some have suggested is a suspicious pattern.
In December, Russian politician Pavel Antov, who was accused of criticising the war in Ukraine as an act of terror, was found dead after a mysterious fall from a hotel in India while on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.
Indian media said Antov jumped from a hotel roof in Rayagada, 500 miles from Kolkata. But Russian consul general in Kolkata, Alexei Idamkin, told news agency Tass he fell out of a window.
In September, Russian businessman Ravil Maganov, 67, died after reportedly falling from the sixth-floor of Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital. He was the second Lukoil board member, Russia’s second-largest oil-producer, to have died in a matter of months.
In February, Russian defence official Marina Yankina, 58, was found dead after an apparent fall from her high-rise apartment in St Petersburg. Her death came a year after she demanded on-air apologies from anyone who suggested that Russia would invade Ukraine accusing strategists in London and Washington of playing a “scary, strange, wild” political game.
Prigozhin has not been seen since he was spotted leaving Rostov in Russia in the back of a car late on Saturday. A private jet linked to the mercenary leader landed at a military airfield in Belarus on Tuesday morning, according to reports, though it was not clear who was on board.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the rebellion by Wagner mercenaries has exposed “real cracks” in Putin’s authority.
