Wagner mercenaries to train Belarusian military, Lukashenko says

Wagner Group mercenaries will begin training the Belarusian military, according to the nation’s government.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced Tuesday that the volatile mercenary group will be working to instruct the nation’s army on weaponry and tactics.

“They’ll tell us about weapons: which ones worked well, which ones did not,” Lukashenko said, according to translations from The Moscow Times.

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“And tactics, armaments — how to attack, how to defend,” he continued. “This is invaluable.”

The announcement recontextualizes the Wagner mercenaries’ relationship with Russia and ally Belarus following a short-lived mutiny attempt against the Russian government last month.

Lukashenko was reported as a key peacemaker between the Kremlin and the Wagner Group through the ordeal.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the attempted mutiny against the Kremlin last month, just days after the march on Moscow was thwarted. 

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday the meeting lasted some three hours on June 29, just five days after the attempted mutiny.

Peskov released few details on the hours-long meeting but said that Putin provided an “assessment” of Wagner’s actions on the battlefield as well as “the events of June 24.”

“The commanders themselves presented their version of what happened. They underscored that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the commander-in-chief, and also said that they are ready to continue to fight for their homeland,” the spokesman said. 

Putin had spent the days following the mutiny by discrediting Prigozhin and claiming that the Russian people did not support his mutinous takeover of Rostov-on-Don and subsequent march toward Moscow.

Fox News’ Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.