A passport with his name Yevgeny Prigozhin, which was found in a raid by the Russian authorities on its premises Wagner in Russia, had been used by an accomplice to enter Lithuania in 2020 in an attempt to trigger a scandal, Lithuanian counterintelligence services announced today.

Prigozhin has been in exile in Belarus since yesterday as part of an agreement to end his rebellion against the Russian leadership.

Russian media outlet Fontanka.ru on Sunday published photos allegedly taken during a raid by Russian security services on Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg that day. The photos show a passport with his name on it.

A photo on one of the passports appears to match a photo of a man who allegedly traveled under Prigozhin’s name. This photo was released in 2021 by the counterintelligence department of the State Security of Lithuania.

“The passport, issued for Prigozhin’s bodyguard, was used in 2020 in the context of an attempted disinformation against Lithuania”, the security service said in a Facebook post today.

The aim of the attack, according to the agency, was to undermine European solidarity to give the impression that Prigozhin himself had defied sanctions to visit EU member state Lithuania. The fact that the passport was found in Prigozhin’s office suggests that Prigozhin himself was part of the conspiracy.

“Lithuanian intelligence services believe that the document proves that the attack was carried out by people under the orders of Prigozhin, possibly in consultation with the intelligence services of the Russian regime,” the security service underlined.