One of the British Army’s leading figures has warned of a northern front in Russia’s war on Ukraine being opened by Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin from Belarus.
General Lord Richard Dannatt, the former chief of general staff in the British Army, believes Ukraine should “watch its northern border with Belarus” carefully following Prigozhin’s deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Saturday night to halt his forces’ march on Moscow.
The deal was apparently struck in return for Prigozhin and his troops avoiding criminal charges from the Kremlin after what appeared to be an attempted coup.
As part of the deal to end Wagner’s advance on the Kremlin, which was brokered by Belarusian President and Kremlin ally Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to reside in Belarus.
However, rather than indicate the end of Prigozhin’s involvement in Russia’s military command, Dannatt believes it could signal a renewed attempt by Russia to attack Ukraine from the north.
“He’s gone to Belarus and this is, I think, a matter of some concern now,” Dannatt told Sky News. “What we don’t know, and what we will discover in the next hours and days, is how many of his fighters have actually gone with him.
“If he has kept an effective fighting force around him, then that presents a threat from the north.”
At the outset of the war on 24 February last year, Russian forces got with a few miles of the Ukrainian capital but were thwarted on the outskirts of the city by Ukrainian troops.
An attack mounted from Belarus now provides an additional threat after Putin stationed an unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons in the country in May.
Tactical nuclear weapons are used for gains on the battlefield, and generally cause less devastation than the strategic nuclear weapons designed to destroy entire cities.
The Belarusian border is less than 100 miles from Kyiv and Dannatt suggested Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will need to reinforce his forces in the north in the event of any attack led by Prigozhin.
“I would certainly want to make sure that I’ve got good observation to the north, on the axis down from Belarus towards Kyiv,” said Dannatt. “The Russians exploited that in the past, quite disastrously, but it’s quite possible that they might do so again, led by Prigozhin and whatever troops he’s got.”
However, another former British military chief believes Prigozhin’s “war is over” following his coup attempt over the weekend.
Admiral Lord West, the former Chief of Naval Staff and First Sea Lord, told i: “Prigozhin is a dead man walking. He really should try to avoid standing near open windows.
“Putin will do everything he can, with all the powers he’s got to get to get rid of him.”
Justin Crump, chief executive of intelligence consultancy Sibylline, added that an attack from Belarus does remain an option for the Kremlin but that there was no current indication that Wagner forces had followed Prigozhin to the country.
“It doesn’t seem that Wagner fighters are going to move to Belarus,” said Mr Crump. “That said, the Belarusian option for a secondary attack remains a card Moscow can play, albeit it’s a very risky strategy and likely to represent something of a desperate effort.
“Ukraine guards this frontier with substantial forces and defences and so the continued potential of a threat from here arguably is more valuable than an actual attack.”
After advancing his forces within 125 miles of Moscow on Saturday, Progozhin agreed the deal to de-escalate tensions with the Kremlin after staging the apparent uprising against the nation’s military leaders.
Earlier in the day Putin accused the group, which has been a key part of Russia’s force in Ukraine, of treason when its fighters crossed the border into Russia and seized control of two cities.
The advance began after Prigozhin accused the Russian military of deliberately murdering his fighters in southern Ukraine, and demanded the removal of defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces General Valery Gerasimov.
After claiming two cities in southern Ukraine – the key military site of Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, home to Russian nuclear weapons – columns of Wagner military hardware and soldiers appeared to make significant progress on its 350-mile march on Moscow without facing any significant opposition from Kremlin forces.
An emergency was declared in the capital and Russia began to rip up roads in an apparent effort to halt the advance, but Prigozhin ordered the advance to stop following the truce with Putin.
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