One Big Winner of Kremlin-Wagner Clash? The Dictator Next Door.
The strongman leader of Belarus, a dependable ally of Vladimir Putin’s, may see a chance to rebrand himself as a statesman.
A photo released by Russian state media showed President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus and President Vladimir V. Putin in Sochi, Russia, earlier this month.Credit...Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik, via Associated Press
Vladimir V. Putin is known for his tight control over the news media in Russia. His onetime ally, the Wagner military group founder Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, is himself the owner of a conservative media outlet and a flamboyant showman on social media.
But it was an unlikely figure who emerged with a public relations victory in the wake of Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny: the longtime dictator of Belarus, the neighboring country that is firmly in Moscow’s orbit.
The Belarusian leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, is viewed largely as the Kremlin’s
docile satrap. But on Sunday, he took credit for brokering an agreement between Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin, averting a scenario that the Russian leader had compared to the civil war that followed the Revolution of 1917.
Now Mr. Lukashenko, an international pariah, is trying to use the P.R. victory to burnish his credentials as a credible statesman, mediator — and above all, loyal ally to Mr. Putin.