Three weeks after Russia’s failed Wagner Rebellion, fighters from the paramilitary Wagner group began working as “instructors” for Belarus’ territorial defense forces, Minsk announced on Friday.
“Training sessions with units of the territorial troops are taking place near Asipovichy” in the east of the country, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said, adding that these conscripts learn, among other things, “moving techniques on the battlefield and tactical shooting”.
“Wagner fighters act as instructors in a number of military disciplines,” adds the Belarusian ministry, which also posted a video of the drills on YouTube.
“There is no doubt that this is a very useful experience for our army,” says a soldier in this video. “We haven’t been in combat since the end of the war in Afghanistan,” he added, referring to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Wagner’s fighters played a major role in the Russian offensive in Ukraine, including being on the front line in the bloody battle for Bakhmout, a devastated city whose capture Moscow claimed in May.
On June 24, they occupied an army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, for several hours and traveled several hundred kilometers towards Moscow, shaking Russian power.
Their rebellion ended on the evening of June 24, with an agreement providing for the departure to Belarus of Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Its fighters had been offered to join the regular troops, return to civilian life or leave for Belarus, whose President Alexander Lukashenko had mediated.
Prigojine’s fate is uncertain, the Kremlin having only admitted having met him at the end of June, a few days after his rebellion, in the company of the main commanders of Wagner. On Friday, several Telegram channels posted a photo of a man resembling him sitting on a cot in a tent in front of a Wagner symbol.