PMC Wagner founder Prigozhin wanted to have his hand on the nuclear button

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of PMC Wagner,  sought to seize nuclear weapons during the June 24, 2023 mutiny – an outcome that was not ruled out even by the West, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with American blogger Mario Nawfal.

During the conversation, Nawfal recalled the events of nearly two years ago – the armed mutiny and the subsequent negotiations between Lukashenko and the Wagner leader which ultimately deescalated the mutiny.

"The West noticed that, and I could see that too, but only once the process had already begun. Prigozhin was eager to get hold of the nuclear button. They believed in the West that he had chances to overthrow the existing government and seize nuclear weapons," Lukashenko said. 

According to Lukashenko, he only realized Prigozhin's plans by midday and "never thought it could escalate to such madness." The Belarusian leader stated that he was prepared to deploy the most combat-ready forces of his republic to defend Moscow and conveyed that to Prigozhin. The West, particularly US and UK intelligence services, highly valued his efforts afterwards, Lukashenko said.

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Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin (1 June 1961 – 23 August 2023) was a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch. He led the Wagner Group, a private military company, and was a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin until launching a rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering businesses that provided services to the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2020 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU".

The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner (ЧВК «Вагнер»), is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and since then by Pavel Prigozhin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making him the current longest-serving European leader. Before embarking on his political career, Lukashenko worked as the director of a state farm (sovkhoz) and served in both the Soviet Border Troops and the Soviet Army. In 1990, Lukashenko was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he assumed the position of head of the interim anti-corruption committee of the Supreme Council of Belarus. In 1994, he won the presidency in the country's inaugural presidential election after the adoption of a new constitution.