The United States is aware of the location of Russia’s Wagner Group fighters on the territory of Belarus and continues to monitor their movements and actions.
This was stated on Wednesday at a press briefing in Washington by U.S. Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller.
"Of course, we’ve seen Wagner forces redeploying to Belarus," the State Department official noted in response to a request to comment on reports of a new camp being set up for Russian mercenaries in the Gomel region.
Why did the US not take any measures to prevent Wagner's mutiny? After this statement could the US launch a counter-offensive operation against Wagner?
The US-based expert, national security analyst, and lawyer Irina Tsukerman said Ednews that Wagner itself is not a big military threat to Poland or to Lithuania, and is unlikely to make any move that would place it in a direct conventional military contact type situation due to the overwhelming power of the NATO alliance:
“However, Wagner could itself be a threat to Poland and Lithuania in many ways short of that - through information warfare, intelligence operations, cyber attacks, electromagnetic warfare, and various forms of asymmetrical attacks, such as terrorism. Moreover, both Lithuania and Poland host significant Russian diasporas and Wagner could take advantage of that for recruitment purposes. Wagner's presence is not just in itself a strategic communications signal and a projection of Russian power to pressure its adversaries, but an effort to test NATO's resolve, commitment to Article 5, and of course, the capability of its defenses.”
According to her, Wagner's presence could be more than just a convenient tool:
“Wagner is whole and parcel a part of Russia's foreign policy but has become more important as a propaganda and messaging tool than just a PMC. For that reason, its so-called mutiny was all a show - as we have seen right after, Prigozhin recovered his weapons from RUssia and was present at the state-level RUssia-Africa summit, which would never have happened had he been anything less than 100% loyal.”
I.Tsukerman thinks that there was no way to prevent that decoy, which allowed Wagner to remove his failing forces from Ukraine and relocate them somewhere where they could be of more use, such as in Belarus where they reflect Russia's strategic regrouping and could also serve as a cover and a diversion from Russia's other operations and strategic plans:
“On the other hand, to the extent, this fictitious and theatrical mutiny caused any temporary chaos, it would have been in the US interests to take advantage of that to put pressure on the Russian troops to leave. Despite advance warning by the intelligence community of that development, the US took no action in part due to a lack of political will and fear of escalation and in part because the intelligence apparatus has grown too bulky and burdensome and has lost its flexibility and ability to acts swiftly and to take advantage of opportunities provided by dynamic circumstance.”
The analyst told that despite this recent new threat, the US is unlikely to take any kinetic action at the time, in part, again due to concern about escalation and intent to avoid direct confrontation with Russia as much as possible, and in part because so far there is no evidence that Wagner is intended to or capable of anything more than the type of provocations that could be handled locally:
“More serious is the possibility that Wagner's presence could be an indication of Russia itself working to open a new front with Belarus participation, and that is something that the neighboring countries may not wish to handle independently without NATO's involvement.”
Ulviyya Shahin
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