The sensational deal between President Vladimir Putin and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin may have collapsed, amid reports that the mercenary fighters are leaving their bases in Belarus and heading to multiple different areas of Wagner activity.
Since Prigozhin's abortive mutiny in June, thousands of Wagner mercenaries have reportedly been relocating to Belarus, taking the Kremlin up on its offer for pardons in exchange for exile. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko oversaw the deal, and reportedly offered to fund Wagner's presence.
But while the Kremlin will likely continue to use Prigozhin's men for "psychological operations" against NATO, sources have told Newsweek that the bulk of the mercenary group may soon be redeployed elsewhere.
The Wagner-linked VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reported on Wednesday that several hundred Wagner fighters were being bussed out of the country after Lukashenko refused to pay for their relocation. The channel suggested that some fighters were traveling to the Russian cities of Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnodar, as well as Libya.
The Institute for the Study of War noted the reports in its Wednesday bulletin, which it said "suggest that aspects of the deal" between Putin and Prigozhin "have collapsed."
"The likely collapse of aspects of the Wagner-Putin-Lukashenko deal indicates that Putin has failed to decisively resolve issues posed by Prigozhin and Wagner following Wagner's June 24 rebellion," the ISW said.
The regular Russian military—led by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu—has been working to absorb Wagner personnel, equipment and operations since the coup collapsed. This process has been proceeding within Russia and on the battlefields of Ukraine, but Wagner's global footprint poses problems for Moscow.
Taking control of the group's lucrative African operations poses a particular problem for a Russian military that has long lacked significant power projection.
"Putin is unlikely to resolve the Wagner problem as long as tensions remain between Putin's own aim of separating Prigozhin from Wagner and Shoigu's aims to secure full [defense ministry] control over Wagner and the other armed forces fighting for Russia," the ISW bulletin said.
"Speculations about Shoigu taking over Russian military operations in Africa from Wagner, if true, will likely only exacerbate tensions between the [defense ministry] and Wagner personnel returning from Belarus or Africa to Russia rather than persuading the Wagner personnel to join conventional Russian military formations in accord with the prior deal."
Newsweek has contacted the Russian and Belarusian foreign ministries by email to request comment.
Exodus From Exile
A Wagner withdrawal from Belarus—whether in part or total—would mark the end of a brief, but tense, standoff on NATO's eastern flank. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia have all expanded their border military footprint in response to Wagner's arrival, fearing the mercenaries might engage in new frontier provocations or accelerate Minsk's long-standing weaponization of migrant flows.
"No one really knows yet," Franak Viacorka—the chief political adviser of exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya—told Newsweek of Wagner's apparent departure. "In the next two to four weeks things will be clearer. Our insights say they will be going to African missions. But Putin and Lukashenko will be using Wagner to threaten Lithuania and Poland."
"This is exactly what they want," Viacorka added, noting that even a small contingent of Wagner troops can continue the Moscow-Minsk psychological operation against the West, while the majority of the group's forces head back to Russia or abroad.
"Instead of helping Ukraine, now the whole discussion of NATO is about protecting the border," Viacorka added. "Putin, Lukashenko and Prigozhin are conducting a psychological operation against the West, and they are pretty successful. From our information, the Wagner Group will probably be used for some small provocations. But it's not enough people for any serious invasion. This is all part of their big game."
Where Next for Wagner?
Samuel Ramani, the author of Russia in Africa and an associate fellow at the British Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Newsweek that a "small number" of Wagner fighters might remain in Belarus to train Lukashenko's people's militias and other units.
Financing, Ramani said, was always going to be a problem given the disappearance of Kremlin funding and the lack of natural resources to support their presence in Belarus. Prigozhin's force has already unsettled NATO, and it does not have the personnel or equipment to launch a major military operation against the alliance or Ukraine.
"There's really not much use, from a strategic perspective, for Wagner to be clustered in Belarus right now," Ramani said. "It's natural that they would want to be going elsewhere. And Russia will be their stop-off point."
"The next step is that they would probably be used to strengthen Russia's presence in Africa," Ramani added. "Maybe they'll start in Libya, maybe these forces will try to get into Niger," he said, noting Prigozhin's overtures to the newly empowered junta there.
"Some of them will probably be deactivated, and they might return one day even to the front line in Ukraine," Ramani said. "Others will probably be kept on standby in case there's a new African theater of operations that opens up and they decide to come in."
Wagner has several ongoing African military deployments. In Libya, the group is fighting with General Khalifa Haftar's Libyan Arab Armed Forces in the country's long-running civil conflict. In Sudan, Wagner forces operate lucrative gold mining and processing facilities.
In the Central African Republic, Wagner troops recently helped ensure another term for President Faustin-Archange Touadera. And in Mali, the mercenaries have moved in to fill the power vacuum left by withdrawing French forces.
"Sudan is probably the likeliest theater for them to deploy to right now," Ramani said, noting Wagner's interest in securing its gold supplies there amid the country's deepening civil war.
