US President Joe Biden suggested Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin could be in danger after carrying out an attempted mutiny last month and briefly capturing a Russian military facility.
“If I were he I’d be careful what I ate,” Biden said at a press conference Thursday in Helsinki following a three-nation European trip. “I would keep an eye on my menu.”
The joke was a reference to high-profile instances of Russian security services using nerve agents and polonium to poison and kill political enemies of President Vladimir Putin.
Biden said world leaders at the NATO summit in Vilnius discussed not knowing where Prigozhin was currently located, and uncertainty around how the mutiny might impact Russian operations in Ukraine and the future of the Wagner Group.
Prigozhin initially moved to Belarus after announcing that he was turning his mercenaries back from a march on Moscow. But the Kremlin this week said Putin held a three-hour meeting with the Wagner Group head and other commanders less than a week after the June 24 uprising.
But Biden did say that the US did not see a heightened risk Putin could use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
“Not only has the West, but China and the rest of the world has said, ‘Don’t go there,’” Biden said.
--With assistance from Jenny Leonard.
