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The Belarusian Defense Ministry released video of Wagner Group mercenaries training the country’s conscripts on Friday, the first official confirmation that the group is present on its territory following its dramatic but brief mutiny against Russia last month.

Wagner mercenaries, who have fought alongside regular Russian troops in Ukraine, turned against their former comrades on June 23 as their chief, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, sought to topple Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov. They marched toward Moscow, occupied military facilities, shot down Russian aircraft and killed Russian service members in the greatest challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s 23-year rule.

Putin agreed to drop insurgency charges in exchange for Prigozhin calling off the rebellion. The Russian president said the mercenaries could either sign contracts with the Russian military to keep fighting in Ukraine, move to Belarus or go home.

Plans for Wagner’s relocation to Belarus raised concerns in the West that the country could become a new staging ground for the group to attack Ukraine. But the agreement between Putin and Prigozhin appears to rule out a future role for the mercenaries in Ukraine unless they sign the contracts.

The video released Friday shows only a few Wagner mercenaries, their faces largely covered, leaving it unclear how many have moved to Belarus. Also unclear is how many men, particularly those in key command positions, signed Defense Ministry contracts and how many have retired. The whereabouts of top Wagner commanders are unclear.

A senior Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that the number of Wagner fighters in Belarus is “very constrained.”

“We can say it is less than 400 people. It is just nothing,” the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said. “I think we will understand what is happening in a few weeks.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in comments posted on Telegram, said intelligence data and measures taken by Belarus indicate “there is no threat of an invasion from Belarus.”

Mercenary boss returned to Russia to collect money and guns

During the Wagner rebellion, Prigozhin said commanders had unanimously rejected a Defense Ministry demand that the mercenaries sign contracts placing the group under the ministry’s command. He called the uprising a “march for justice” to “punish” Shoigu and Gerasimov.

In the weeks since, flight tracking data for his personal jet suggest he has traveled twice to Belarus. But he has spent much of his time in St. Petersburg, his hometown, to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/06/yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-wagner-rebellion/" target=_blank>reclaim</a> personal guns and around $110 million in cash that was seized by Russian authorities and apparently to settle the future of his sprawling Concord Group, including closing down Patriot Media, the information wing of his empire that included his notorious troll farm. He also spent time in Moscow.

Putin told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper this week that he met Prigozhin and 35 Wagner mercenaries in the Kremlin five days after the rebellion. He said they could continue fighting in Ukraine under commander Andrei Troshev — presumably after signing Defense Ministry contracts — but Prigozhin dismissed the offer.

“They could all gather in one place and continue to serve,” Putin said. “And nothing would change for them. They would be led by the same person who had been their real commander all along,” he said, referring to Troshev.

He said many of the Wagner members nodded, a claim that appeared intended to drive a wedge between Prigozhin and his fighters.

“Many nodded when I said this,” Putin said, “and Prigozhin, who was sitting in front and did not see this, said after listening: ‘No, the guys do not agree with this decision.’”

Putin emphasized that the options for those who do not sign contracts with the ministry are limited. Legally speaking, he said, Wagner “does not exist” because mercenaries are illegal in Russia, an astonishing statement given that he confirmed shortly after the rebellion that Wagner was fully state funded at a cost of around $1 billion a year.

Prigozhin’s Concord Group was paid a similar amount, including for catering contracts with the army, Putin said at the time.

His decision to drop charges against Wagner, meet them in the Kremlin and allow them to move to Belarus or go home, even after the group shot down Russian aircraft and killed Russian troops, has raised questions about his authority.

Further turmoil in Russia’s military came Thursday with news of the dismissal of a general who commanded one of Russia’s elite military forces in Ukraine after he criticized Russia’s top brass and what he said was their failure to adequately support Russian front-line troops. Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army, is one of a number of senior military officials who have broken military discipline and echoed the complaints of Prigozhin over many months about the failures of the Russian military command in Ukraine.

Lukashenko claims he persuaded Putin not to kill Wagner boss Prigozhin

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/27/prigozhin-lukashenko-putin-wagner-rebellion/" target=_blank>brokered</a> the deal between Putin and Prigozhin, told reporters this month that Wagner would not attack Ukraine from his country, but it would defend it from invasion.

News that Wagner, seen as one of the most aggressive and successful Russian assault forces, would be based in Belarus stirred unease there. Lukashenko has tried to assuage those fears.

“I am not at all worried that we will have any number of fighters deployed,” he said. “If we need to involve them, we will do it instantly. All the knowledge that they have accumulated at the front, we will consider and use for training.”

Russia fires top commander in Ukraine who criticized Defense Ministry

In Moscow, officials appear to have been wrestling with the question of how Wagner can be replaced in Ukraine. The mercenaries took the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May after more than 200 days of fighting and then handed it over to regular Russian troops, but Ukrainian forces in recent days have made headway in flanking the city.

Wagner appears set to continue its operations in Africa, where it has extended Russia’s geopolitical clout through security contracts and propaganda operations involving more than a dozen governments.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry said Friday that Wagner was training conscripts in its territorial defense force near Osipovichi, some 65 miles southeast of Minsk, where a large military base capable of housing around 5,000 troops has been established since the rebellion.

Maxim Shemetov

Wagner “fighters acted as instructors in a number of military disciplines,” the ministry said.

In the video, some conscripts praise Wagner’s expertise, skills and battlefield experience.

“They are very educated, they know their business and can teach us a lot,” one serviceman, who is not identified, says.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service, Andriy Demchenko, said in a briefing in Kyiv that the Ukrainian-Belarusian frontier “remains fully under control.”

“On the other side of the border, we do not see that the enemy has a group necessary for a repeated invasion of Ukraine,” Demchenko said. “Despite everything, we must be ready for any development of the situation because Belarus, unfortunately, continues to support Russia in its war against Ukraine.”

Catherine Belton contributed to this report.

Cambridge University, BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Russian, Ukrainian, French)

Francesca Ebel is The Washington's Post's Russia correspondent. Before joining The Post in 2022, Ebel was the Associated Press's Tunis correspondent.

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2016: Winner of the Overseas Press Club Madeline Dane Ross Award for international reporting on the human condition

2016: Reporting fellow, International Women’s Media Foundation  

2016: Anchored the Los Angeles Times story, "Diary of Terror," that was awarded an Associated Press Media Editors award in the Sally Jacobsen International Perspective category, as well as a citation for storytelling from the APME

2009: Winner of the Daniel Pearl Award for courage and integrity in reporting

2009: Awarded the Batten Medal by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, recognizing “compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog"

2008: Citation by the Overseas Press Club in relation to the Joe and Laurie Dine award for international reporting dealing with human rights

2008: Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy award for international reporting on human rights, social justice or the power of individual action

2007: Winner of the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award for international reporting.

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Robyn Dixon is a foreign correspondent on her third stint in Russia, after almost a decade reporting there beginning in the early 1990s. In November 2019 she joined The Washington Post as Moscow bureau chief. 

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