Lukashenko: No one came out of mutiny a hero, Belarus leader tells BBC

It was Alexander Lukashenko who had brokered the deal to end the Wagner mutiny. So we're told.

So if there's anyone who can shine a light on this murkiest of stories, surely it's the leader of Belarus. Or so we hope.

We're part of a small group of journalists invited to the Palace of Independence in Minsk for "a conversation" with Mr Lukashenko.

Only a few weeks ago there'd been feverish speculation about his health. But the Belarusian leader clearly has stamina. The "conversation" lasts nearly four hours.

Instead of shining a light, though, he muddies the waters on the recent Russian uprising.

According to the agreement between the Wagner Group and the Kremlin, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was supposed to move to Belarus, along with some of his fighters.

That hasn't happened. Not yet anyway.

"As of this morning," says Mr Lukashenko, "the Wagner fighters, very serious ones, are still in the camps they'd withdrawn to after Bakhmut.

"As for Yevgeny Prigozhin, he's in St Petersburg. Or perhaps this morning he flew to Moscow. Or perhaps he's somewhere else. But he's not in Belarus."

I ask Alexander Lukashenko whether that means the deal is off.

He denies that. It feels as if there are conversations going on behind the scenes we're not going to be told about.

When it comes to discussing the mutiny, Moscow and Minsk have not exactly been on the same page.

Last weekend Russian state TV declared that President Vladimir Putin had emerged from these dramatic events a hero.

"I think that no-one came out of that situation a hero," Mr Lukashenko tells me.

"Not Prigozhin, not Putin, not Lukashenko. There were no heroes. And the lesson from this? If we create armed groups like this, we need to keep an eye on them and pay serious attention to them."

The "conversation" moves on to nuclear weapons. In particular, the nuclear warheads Russia has said it is moving to Belarus.

"God forbid I should ever have to take the decision to use them," Mr Lukashenko had said recently, adding, "But I won't hesitate to use them."

I remind him of those comments.

"Joe Biden could say the same thing, and Prime Minister Sunak," Mr Lukashenko replies. "And my friend Xi Jinping and my Big Brother President Putin."

"But these are not your weapons we're talking about," I point out. "They're Russian ones. It's not your decision to take."

"In Ukraine a whole army is fighting with foreign weapons, isn't it," the Belarusian leader retorts. "Nato weapons. Because they've run out of their own. So why can't I fight with someone else's weapons?"

But we're talking nuclear weapons, not pistols, I reply.

"Nuclear, yes. They're weapons too. Tactical nuclear weapons."

As you can probably guess from his nuclear comments, Alexander Lukashenko is a controversial figure.

The US, EU and the UK do not recognise him as the legitimate president of Belarus. In 2020 Belarusians poured on to the streets to accuse him of stealing the country's presidential election. The protests were brutally suppressed.

I mention the case of jailed opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova.

"For months her relatives and lawyers have been denied access to her in prison. Why?" I ask.

"I don't know anything about this," he claims.

"The last time I interviewed you in the autumn of 2021, there were 873 political prisoners in Belarus," I remind Mr Lukashenko. "Now there are 1,500."

"There is no article in our criminal code for political crimes," he replies.

The absence of an article on political crimes doesn't mean there are no political prisoners, I point out.

"Prisoners cannot be political prisoners, if there's no article," he insists. "How can they be?"