There was some question lately whether or not Yevgeny Prigozhin was still among the living. Today that has been resolved thanks to a newly released video, though the quality of it makes it a bit hard to verify.

A video emerged on Wednesday that appears to show Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin greeting his fighters in Belarus, in what would be his first public appearance since he led an armed rebellion in Russia last month.

“Welcome guys! I am happy to greet you all. Welcome to the Belarusian land! We fought with dignity! We have done a lot for Russia,” a man resembling and sounding like Prigozhin says in the video, which was posted on pro-Wagner Telegram channels on Wednesday and then shared on Prigozhin’s account.

CNN notes that the video appears unedited and metadata shows it was shot either last night at dusk or at dawn today. Because the video is so dark it’s difficult to tell if the speaker is really Prigozhin.

Yevgeny Prigozhin sighted! He says Wagner will "be here in Belarus for some time" before "gathering our strength and heading off for Africa."

"We may return to [fight in Ukraine] when we will be certain that we won't be made to disgrace ourselves and our experience," he added. pic.twitter.com/G4W2uWSjNC

— max seddon (@maxseddon) July 19, 2023

Based on the content of the speech, it certainly sounds like Prigozhin. You’d think that after being spared by Putin he’d be choosing his words more carefully but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He’s still trashing the army and, by implication, the defense minister. 

“What is happening now at the front is a disgrace in which we do not need to participate. We need to wait for the moment when we can prove ourselves fully,” Prigozhin said. “Therefore a decision was taken for us to station here in Belarus for some time. I am sure that during this time we will make the Belarusian army second greatest in the world. And if needed, we will defend them if it comes to it.”…

“We should prepare, get better and set off on a new journey to Africa,” he said. “Maybe we will return back [to Ukraine] when we will be confident that we will not be asked to make an embarrassment of ourselves and our experience.”

Before Prigozhin launched his “March for Justice” toward Moscow, Putin had demanded that Wagner fighters sign agreements with the Russian army. Prigozhin refused and, based on these comments, he’s still refusing. Rather than return to Ukraine where these troops are surely needed, he’s talking about heading off to Africa. That doesn’t sound like a group that is now under the control of the regular army. In fact it sounds like he’s refusing to engage in Ukraine until such time as he can do so without army supervision.

How and why all of this happened is still confusing even to the UK spymaster running MI6. Richard Moore gave a speech today in Prague in which he said Putin’s behavior was difficult to follow.

“If you look at Putin’s behaviors on that day”, Richard Moore said of June 24, “Prigozhin started off I think, as a traitor at breakfast. He had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later, he was invited for tea. So, there are some things and even the chief of MI6 finds that a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”…

“He really didn’t fight back against Prigozhin”, Moore said. “He cut a deal to save his skin, using the good offices of the leader of Belarus”, he said, referring to the intervention of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who struck the deal. “So even I can’t see inside Putin’s head”, he added. “He has to have realized, I am sure that something that is deeply rotten in the state of Denmark – to quote Hamlet – and he had to cut this deal.”

Moore added it was difficult to make “firm judgments” about the fate of Wagner itself, as a mercenary group, but they “do not appear to be engaged in Ukraine”, and that there “appears to be elements of them in Belarus.”

All of this seems to jibe with what was in that newly released video. Putin made a deal which got Wagner out of Russia but which doesn’t seem to have achieved the control over the group he was seeking. That takes them off the table as an immediate threat to Putin but it also removes them as a force in Ukraine. Remember, Wagner is the only group that had achieved much of anything on the battlefield over the past year. If the Russian army continues to retreat in the face of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Prigozhin’s success may seem even more singular as time passes. All that to say his story may not be over yet. He’s out for the moment but Putin is clearly weakened both at home and in Ukraine.

Finally, during his speech in Prague, Moore made an appeal directly to disaffected Russians. “I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us. …Their secrets will always be safe with us, and together we will work to bring the bloodshed to an end,” he said. He decline to offer specifics but did suggest that because of the situation in Russia he’d been getting more recruits (of potential spies) than usual.

Here’s the full speech and interview with Richard Moore: