- Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is in Russia less than 2 weeks after his mutiny, according to reports.
- An independent Russian news outlet said Prigozhin retrieved his belongings that were seized by the government.
- Among the weapons he reclaimed was an honorary pistol given to him by Russia’s defense minister.
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is collecting his prized — and poached — possessions in Russia, less than two weeks after he staged a shocking uprising against Russia’s defense ministry, according to media reports.
Prigozhin last month led thousands of Wagner troops-for-hire in an armed revolt against the Russian military in the most significant threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s power in decades. After months of castigating Russian military leaders, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Prigozhin set about trying to depose them.
After hours of marching, Prigozhin eventually turned his forces back saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed. The Kremlin ultimately agreed to drop criminal charges against the one-time Putin ally in exchange for his exile to neighboring Belarus.
But the specifics of that tenuous peace deal are even more unclear this week after Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said Thursday that Prigozhin was not in his country, directly contradicting his previous statements on the matter.
Lukashenko said days after the mutiny that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus, but the dictatorial leader said this week that the Wagner leader was in his native city of St. Petersburg on Thursday. Prigozhin has not been seen in public since the uprising.
Independent Russian news outlet Fontanka reported that Prigozhin was back in St. Petersburg early this week and The Washington Post cited a businessman in the Russian city who said the same.
Reported St. Petersburg sightings of Prigozhin come as Russian pro-Kremlin media outlet Izvestia this week shared images it claimed to have obtained of Prigozhin’s home during a raid conducted by Russian security forces. The images, which have not been independently verified by Insider, show a large collection of guns, a shelf of wigs, and piles of gold bars and cash.
According to The New York Times, Fontanka reported Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg earlier this week to collect the weapons that Russian authorities took from his house during the uprising. According to the outlet, Prigozhin arrived at the city’s Federal Security Services building in a BMW in the middle of the night on Tuesday where he was given several automatic rifles and pistols that authorities took from his cottage home.
Among the treasures Prigozhin reportedly recovered was an honorary Glock pistol that had previously been given to him by Shoigu — the very defense official Prigozhin sought to oust — before the men’s relationship soured.
“It’s not the end of Prigozhin,” the unnamed St. Petersburg businessman told The Post on Wednesday. “They returned all his money to him. More than this, today they even gave back to him his honorary pistol, the Glock, and another weapon. He came to take it himself.”
An anonymous Pentagon official told The Times that Prigozhin had been between Moscow and St. Petersburg during most of the time since the revolt. It remains unclear if he ever even went to Belarus, the official said, because he has been known to use body doubles.
