The internal challenges Wagner will face after the death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin will divert the military company’s attention away from Lithuania, believes Laurynas Kasčiūnas, conservative MP and chairman of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defence.
“I would say that when internal challenges arise, it is natural to think less about external affairs,” the MP told BNS on Thursday.
Russia’s aviation agency reported on Wednesday evening that the commander of the Wagner group was on board the private plane that crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg.
The death of Prigozhin had been confirmed earlier by channels close to him on the social network Telegram.
Some experts urged caution and noted that the information should not be considered as confirmation of the death of the founder of Wagner.
At the same time, the French government said on Thursday that there were reasonable doubts about the circumstances of the plane crash.
Wagner led an aborted insurrection in Russia at the end of June, which ended in a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, under which Prigozhin and some of his fighters were to move to Belarus.
Some fighters left for Belarus. Minsk claims that Wagner members are training Belarusian soldiers.
Lithuanian officials have raised concerns that Wagner’s presence in the neighbouring country posed security risks.
“We should wait. When some of them moved to Belarus, I said even then that Prigozhin’s role would not be what it had been. Now, hearing and seeing the mood in Wagner after this news – well, I think that their thoughts are not about Lithuania, Poland, Latvia,” Kasčiūnas said.
According to Lithuanian and Polish data, there are currently about 4,000 Wagner troops stationed in Belarus, some of them close to the Lithuanian and Polish borders. The commander of the State Border Guard Service claims that the number of mercenaries could reach up to 4,500.
“I don’t really think they can organise a march, they are not capable of doing it, but, say, to transform themselves, to support missions in Africa, to use Belarus as a kind of training ground, a rotational territory – that is possible,” Kasčiūnas speculated about the future trajectory of the mercenary group.
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