Extradite Yevgeny Prigozhin from Belarus; Try Him for Wagner Group’s War Crimes

Yeah, I know that we’re mostly supposed to cover local politics, but this is where I write the most, so here you are.

People seem to miss something in the matter of Yevgeny Prigozhin, “Putin’s Chef” and founder/leader of the infamous Wagner Group mercenary fighters, being exiled from Russa to Belarus in the wake of his capturing the city of Rostov-on-Don and marching his troops towards Moscow to remove Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Defense Minister.

Belarus’s horrific dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, brokered this agreement — and I think that there may be more to it than meets the eye. Lukashenko owes his political success (and ability to squash dissent) to his close relationship to Putin; he is Putin’s most faithful ally among leaders of the former Soviet republics. Much speculation has suggested that Putin might invade Ukraine from Belarus, it’s northern neighbor, whether Lukashenko likes it or not. (The main problem is not actually whether Lukashenko would like it, but rather whether it would lead to an uprising that could topple him — all of which could prove a distraction to Russia which is intent on keeping him in power.)

The presence of Prigozhin poses a significant danger to Ukraine, because Prigozhin — whose troops were responsible for the war crimes in Bucha and much more — would not only be supposedly on his own (giving Putin plausible deniability for whatever Wagner Group did) but could be about 50 miles away by air from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and less than two hours by road, if he had people drive into western Ukraine east of Chernobyl. (Yes, that Chernobyl.) And Putin needn’t worry; he’d be, a safe 800 miles by air and 1000 miles by road from Moscow.

Remember, Prigozhin is no fool; he’s the guy behind the social media disinformation campaign that elected Donald Trump in 2016. And he’s not afraid of committing war crimes; his troops were behind the atrocities in Bucha and the most effective fighting in Kharkiv. He can engage in standard military and paramilitary forms of warfare, as well as CIA/KGB style methods like getting fluent Ukranian speakers in civilian clothes close enough to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his family. This is an incredible distraction for a President and County trying to pursue its spring/summer offensive before the autumn/winter snows and slush.

Now I’m not saying that the entire Putin-Prigozhin dispute was staged — but arguably it might as well have been, given how much it seems to improve Russia’s prospects at a time when Ukraine wants to focus on its offensive. And the beautiful thing about it, from Putin’s perspective, is that he can disavow any knowledge of or control over whatever his exiled former buddy does. And Lukashenko himself has a good measure plausible deniability as well! He doesn’t have to keep track of the Wagner remnants’ whereabouts — and whoever will be responsible might either intentionally or accidentally screw up. And that’s not the only way that this could turn out to be a win for Putin: if Zelenskyy is not comfortable with Prigoshin potentially an OC-to-San Diego distance from Kyiv, he could do what he’s threated to do before and invade Belarus. But doing that would give Putin a pretext to defend Belarus — potentially with horrible weapons that the world might have to accept were acceptable based on the principle that Belarus is as worthy of having its territorial integrity protected as Ukraine is. (And Belarus is part of the Russian counterpart of NATO, while Ukraine isn’t part of NATO and won’t be anytime soon.)

Is there any way out of this? Ukraine might want to close its borders with Belarus — which doesn’t generally work well, and which takes a lot of effort even for partial success, again detracting from its military efforts. But I do think that there’s one thing that Ukraine — and its other supporters, as well as (for reasons you’ll get in a moment) — could do immediately. They could demand of Belarus that Prigozhin be extradited immediately to stand trial for war crimes. Possibly, his loyal troops involved in atrocities could be tried as well.

Here’s the dilemma that puts Putin in: if Putin really does hate Prigozhin now, then he shouldn’t care whether Prigoshin is sent to the Hague, or to a Ukrainian Court (which I suppose might be assembled somewhere else, like Lithuania or Sweden.) But if Putin really does not hate Prigozhin, and some or all of what has taken place has been something like a charade — well, then he loses his plausibly deniability. Belarus could be coerced with the same level of economic sanctions as Russia — some of which already exist, but the worst of which it would like to avoid. But if Putin is silent and Lukashenko ends up owning the problem of harboring Prigozhin, he’s going to be in hot water.

One possible way out for him might be for him not to send Prigoshin to stand trial not for his actions in Ukraine, but for the Wagner Group’s actions in Africa — several countries in Africa, in fact. This includes committing mass rapes and mass murders to control the gold mining town of Bambari in the Central African Republic. (The C.A.R. dictator is giving Wagner Group lots of gold mining contracts in exchange for his protection, so any trial of him would likely have to happen someplace chosen by the African Union or other international body.) Wagner has been doing similar things in lots of other African countries as well, many of which could yield prosecutions.

(Note: yes, I do know that the U.S. and its people and entities have been guilty of similar crimes, including the stealing of mineral and other natural resources from countries where we help bad people stay in power. It’s a real problem, and if I were a supporter of such actions than this proposal would be hypocritical.) But the point here is to get Prigozhin to a place where he could be tried and put out of business — rather than whatever he might end up doing while either in real of fake exile in Belarus. The fact that lots of corporations and millionaires may have been engaged in tax evasion as well did not make it illegitimate to use tax evasion as the way to take down Al Capone.)

The U.S. should call for the extradition of Prigozhin as quickly as possible. It can be to the Hague, it could be to someplace the African Union chooses, it could be to Ukraine, or Poland, or even to the U.S. We’d be doing Putin a favor — this is his enemy, right? The sooner we can get Lukashenko to decide that he doesn’t want to hold tightly on this particular hot potato, the better. If Prigoshin somehow slips through his fingers and spends the next years as an international fugitive — well, that’s not so bad. It will be hard for him to make much trouble when he has no way left to finance it.

#ExtraditePrigozhin!