Putin harmed himself by admitting to financing Wagner Group – Lithuania's former Foreign Minister
Linas Linkevičius, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, believes that the President of Russia harmed himself and reduced the possibilities of hybrid operations with the participation of the Wagner Group when he recognised the state financing of the private military company.
Source: Linkevičius in an interview with European Pravda
Details: Linkevičius noted that he does not really believe in any activities of the Wagner private military company in Belarus and assumes that they will move from there to somewhere else unless Russia decides to use them for hybrid military provocations.
However, after Putin's statements, where the head of the Kremlin disclosed the source of financing of the Wagner private military, in his opinion, the risks of this are much smaller.
Quote: "It was a big mistake by him. It was even a criminal matter – [in] addition to what he did, accused as a war criminal, an additional crime when he openly said about fully financing this group of billion per year, maybe should be even more money for that. But, nevertheless, it’s sufficient to prove that this is not a separate force but this is the ‘hand of the Kremlin’. And now whatever Prigozhin will do, provocation or whatever, will be very difficult to convincingly tell that this is nothing to do with the [Russian] government," Linas Linkevičius noted.
He also believes that it is not very safe for the self-proclaimed president of Belarus to allow the Wagner fighters to stay in Belarus for a long time, and it is unclear what benefit the self-proclaimed president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, will get from this.
"They have this combat experience, whatever size of this troop, but it’s also quite dangerous. So, I don’t know whether it’s an asset for Lukashenko," Linkevičius said.
Watch the full interview on European Pravda’s YouTube channel.
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