Wagner Group founder and failed coup plotter Yevgeniy Prigozhin has taken up exile in Belarus — but he must know he is not safe. Russian President Vladimir Putin has no reservations about trying to kill his enemies on foreign territory — a time-honored practice for Russian leaders. But fear of Putin is not the only thing likely keeping Prigozhin up at night.
As the decade-long leader of the Wagner private military company, he also faces accountability and punishment for the wide array of international crimes his mercenaries committed on his watch. The international justice system often works slowly, but if Prigozhin thinks he is immune from prosecution, he is wrong. There is no statute of limitations on atrocities. And the work to amass evidence of Wagner’s war crimes and crimes against humanity is already well underway.
For the rest of his life, Prigozhin will have to worry about getting arrested and transported to The Hague, where the International Criminal Court convenes. The ICC has jurisdiction in several countries where Wagner forces allegedly committed prosecutable international crimes.
Getting Prigozhin into custody will be the biggest challenge. The ICC doesn’t have a police force, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko isn’t exactly a fan of the court. And Putin, having been indicted by the ICC for war crimes himself, isn’t likely to help the effort either.
But there is a long history of war-crimes fugitives eventually facing justice, said Stephen Rapp, a former State Department ambassador-at-large for war-crimes issues. For example, Gambia’s former interior minister, Ousmane Sonko, sought asylum in Europe after falling out with his dictator, but was arrested and charged in Switzerland in 2017 for atrocities committed in his home country.
In the case of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević, the United States and the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia carried out a sustained campaign to pressure the Yugoslav government to hand him over, which it eventually did in 2001. The same strategy could be used on Belarus regarding Prigozhin.
“The guy is perhaps too hot to handle in Belarus and getting him out may be a solution that Lukashenko could essentially tolerate,” Rapp told me.
Prigozhin is only going to become more and more vulnerable. For now, he might be protected by his loyal Wagner troops. But that kind of loyalty costs money, and Putin is quickly taking over Wagner’s global empire of military and industrial operations. Putin is also hunting down all of Prigozhin’s collaborators in Russia. Over time, Prigozhin might come to believe staying in Belarus is too dangerous.
He might remember the fate of former Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who thought he was safe in exile in Rwanda until the U.S. government put a reward on his head. In 2013, fearing betrayal from his own guards, he walked into the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, turned himself in, and asked to be sent to the ICC.
“Prigozhin might prefer a podium in The Hague to death from a high window in Minsk,” Rapp said. “He may think himself vulnerable in Belarus. … He may find it harder and harder to support his own protection.”
According to the international legal doctrine of command responsibility, Prigozhin can be held responsible for all international crimes committed by forces under his control — and there are many for prosecutors to choose from.
The ICC has jurisdiction in Mali, where just last year Wagner mercenaries and government forces “summarily executed” at least 500 innocent people over four days in the town of Moura, according to a recent report by the United Nations’ human rights office. Wagner also stands accused of participating in atrocities perpetrated by the Sudanese paramilitary force known as the Rapid Support Forces and leading a campaign of mass killing, torture and rape in the Central African Republic.
In addition to the ICC, Ukraine will have its own accountability and justice tribunals for Russian forces who have committed war crimes on its territory, including Wagner mercenaries. And under the principle of universal jurisdiction, individual criminal cases can also be brought in any country willing to go after perpetrators on its soil. German courts recently convicted a former Syrian official for war crimes that were committed in Syria in 2014.
The Biden administration this week announced new sanctions on Wagner targeting its operations in Africa and the Middle East. The U.S. government should also fund and support all international accountability and justice efforts to ensure Prigozhin faces prison for the war crimes he has overseen.
This would also send a signal to any other “private” military corporation honchos who may think their non-government status protects them from facing international justice. Putin isn’t the first dictator to outsource his atrocities, and he won’t be the last.