Prigozhin arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday, according to Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who could not definitively say where the mercenary head was now.
“Maybe he went to Moscow, maybe somewhere else, but he is not on the territory of Belarus,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian state media.
Russian security forces returned 10 billion rubles, or $110 million, five bars of gold and weapons to Prigozhin after seizing them from him in a raid, according to a local Russian outlet, Fontanka.
“His driver arrived with an official power of attorney to collect billions,” Fontanka wrote on Telegram.
Russian state-run media channels on Wednesday began broadcasting what appears to have been a raid of Prigozhin’s properties.
When asked about Prigozhin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia is “not tracking his whereabouts” and they “have no possibilities and desire to do so.”
Prigozhin, whose mercenary fighters played a key role in the war in Ukraine, railed for months against what he called weak leadership from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The Wagner boss seized the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on June 24 before marching on Moscow with thousands of fighters behind his back.
The uprising was aborted the next day after Putin agreed to drop charges against Prigozhin, with the mercenary leader set to go to Belarus.
Although he granted Wagner fighters freedom, Putin has since railed against the “organizers” of the rebellion.
Last week, he said Moscow funded Wagner Group and Concord, a parent company, nearly $2 billion from May 2022 to May 2023.
Putin hinted Concord would be investigated for potentially stealing from the government.
Concord’s catering company has now lost contracts with the Kremlin and Prigozhin’s media group, Patriot Media, has reportedly shut down.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
