For a base that Wagner Group forces are definitively not at – at least for now – the training facility at Tsel, near Osipovichi in Belarus, is certainly interesting.
We saw row upon row of tents – 300 in all and enough to house 5,000 troops, an adviser to the Belarusian defence minister told us.
Wagner representatives have not been here, nor was it built for them, said Leonid Kasinsky, but if they decide to come, they’ll be welcome.
The site has been the subject of feverish speculation since satellite imagery appeared to show the rapid construction of tents here in the days after Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny.
Sky News saw row upon row of tents
On 24 June, the day his men marched on Moscow, no activity was seen at the site from above.
Two days later, the first few tents were visible.
Had there been a connection between the two events, then Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko would have needed to give instructions pretty quickly.
He said in a meeting with journalists on Thursday that he had offered Wagner the base at Tsel, among others, but they had said no and their “vision for encampment” differed from his.
For the time being, he claimed, they were back at their bases to rest and had made no firm decisions as yet about any Belarus deployment.
Leonid Kasinsky says Wagner Group fighters would be welcome
Tents began to appear in the days after the Wagner mutiny
Not far from Tsel is the military town of Osipovichi and the Yuzhny military garrison, which houses Russia’s 465th tactical missile brigade.
In February, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that Belarus had taken delivery of Russian Iskander missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear payloads.
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Given the fact that the 465th brigade is Belarus’s only tactical missile brigade, already armed with the soviet Tochka-U missile system, it would make sense for the Iskanders to have been deployed there.
On Thursday, Mr Lukashenko proudly declared that tactical nuclear warheads had already been delivered to storage sites on Belarusian territory and that the full quota would be in situ by the end of the year.
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If those storage sites are near Osipovichi, which would make sense given the fact that Iskander and Tochka-U missiles are both capable of carrying ballistic and nuclear warheads, then Mr Kasinsky wasn’t giving much away.
“No one is ever going to tell you where the tactical nuclear weapons are stationed – you should understand that,” he said.