Mr. Putin “was skeptical about the possibility of negotiations and doubted whether Yevgeny Prigozhin would pick up the phone, since at that time he did not talk to anyone,” a Belarusian government propagandist, Vadim Gigin, told pro-Kremlin media on Sunday, in an interview that was covered extensively by Belta.
But Mr. Putin agreed to mediation, and when “the president of Belarus called, Yevgeny Prigozhin immediately picked up the phone,” said Mr. Gigin, on whom the European Union once imposed sanctions for “supporting and justifying repression against the democratic opposition and civil society.”
The conversation between Mr. Lukashenko and Mr. Prigozhin was “very difficult,” said Mr. Gigin, who this month became the director of the National Library of Belarus. “They immediately blurted out such vulgar things it would make any mother cry. The conversation was hard, and as I was told, masculine.”
Though other possible explanations have been advanced for why Mr. Prigozhin gave up on his “march for justice” to Moscow, some offering minimal credit to Mr. Lukashenko, the Belarusian media machine has been trumpeting his role as a power broker, a rare role reversal at a time when the dictator has become overwhelmingly dependent on Russia.
“Putin lost because he showed how weak his system is, that he can be challenged so easily,” said Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat and analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Prigozhin challenged, he attacked, he was so bold and then he retreated, looking like a loser. Only Lukashenko won points — first in the eyes of Putin, in the eyes of the international community as a mediator or negotiator, and as a possible guarantor of the deal.”
Mr. Lukashenko has managed to hold onto power for 29 years, but at a cost. He has increasingly allowed Belarus to become a vassal state of Russia, especially after getting Moscow’s backing in 2020, when he violently crushed a democracy movement challenging his claim that he had won an election in a landslide.
Dependent on Moscow not just for political support but also for economic viability, Belarus allowed Mr. Putin to use it as a staging ground for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and as a storage site for Russian tactical nuclear weapons.
