Even earlier than Vladimir Putin’s forces crossed Ukraine’s border on February 24, operatives from the shadowy Wagner Group had penetrated Ukraine ’s defences laying the groundwork for the Russian assault.
The Wagner Group is modelled on personal armies like American navy contractors Blackwater, or South Africa-based Govt Outcomes. However whereas these firms are prepared to promote their providers to the very best bidder, The Wagner Group works for only one shopper – Vladimir Putin.
On Putin’s orders the paramilitary organisation has dedicated appalling atrocities everywhere in the world.
In only one battle – the civil warfare within the Central African Republic [CAR]– Russian-backed “instructors” have been implicated in 103 alleged warfare crimes together with torture, homicide and rape.
In February 2021, a 20-year-old lady from CAR claimed a number of Russian mercenaries had kidnapped and raped her. “They tortured me like an animal,” she mentioned.
In one other incident males believed to have been from the Wagner Group fired indiscriminately right into a crowd of civilians taking shelter in a mosque: “They weren’t attempting to determine who was a insurgent and who was a civilian,” mentioned one eyewitness. “They wished to kill folks,”
Whereas some Wagner Group operatives are ex-military, many others are former convict with little or no navy coaching or expertise.
However they’re drawn by the cash. The Instances stories that Wagner Group mercenaries’ fight pay in Syria was roughly six occasions the typical wage in Russia.
(Picture: SPUTNIK/AFP through Getty Pictures)
The group is run by two of Putin’s closest allies.
Oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin specialises in espionage and deception. He was sanctioned by the US for alleged involvement in a bid to sway the results of the 2016 presidential election and different political contests, and is believed to be allied with Maria Butina, a Russian spy who infiltrated numerous Conservative political teams such because the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation.
His much less delicate accomplice is Dmitry Utkin, who makes no secret of his fascination with Adolf Hitler, ceaselessly showing in Nazi uniforms or participating in re-enactments of WWII occasions.
In December 2021, the Council of the European Union accused Utkin of being “answerable for severe human rights abuses dedicated by the group, which embrace torture and extrajudicial, abstract or arbitrary executions and killings”.
However regardless of appreciable proof that the Wagner Group has taken half in quite a few conflicts world wide – together with Syria, Sudan, the Central African Republic and elsewhere – there isn’t any registered central workplace for the organisation and it doesn’t formally exist.
However regardless of that, the group has been a helpful asset for Putin. “The Russian authorities has discovered Wagner and different personal navy firms to be helpful as a technique to lengthen its affect abroad with out the visibility and intrusiveness of state navy forces,” a report from the Centre for Strategic and Worldwide Research mentioned.
Wagner Group mercenaries labored with pro-Russian separatists and organised crime figures to engineer the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 – step one in Putin’s plan to soak up Ukraine into his new Russian empire.
And the personal military has already gone head-to-head with US Special Forces.
In 2018, a detachment of round 30 elite US troops have been guarding a Syrian gasoline plant. An enormous pressure of Russian mercenaries, most if not all of them believed to be from the Wagner group, attacked the plant.
Russia denied duty for what they known as the “pro-Assad” troops.
“The Russian excessive command in Syria assured us it was not their folks,” Defence Secretary Jim Mattis mentioned. As soon as he had decided that the massive group of Russian-speaking attacvkers, backed up by three Russian-made T-72 tanks, Secretary Marris informed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, that the attackers must be “annihilated”.
Whereas the Individuals have been massively outnumbered – estimate put the Russian pressure at round 500 – they’d appreciable air assist. They known as in F-15 and F-22 fighters, Reaper drones, and even huge B52 bombers to assist them maintain off the Russian assault.
(Picture: butina_maria/Instagram)
Paperwork obtained by The New York Instances estimated that as much as 300 males of the “pro-regime pressure” have been killed.
However Sean McFate, a professor of technique at Georgetown, informed The Instances: “It took America’s most elite troops and superior plane to defeat 500 mercenaries. What occurs after they must face a thousand? 5 thousand?”
We might quickly discover out. Wagner Group operatives had been in Ukraine for months earlier than the invasion, and Russia skilled Mikheil Saakashvili says that Putin’s consideration might subsequent flip to both Finland or Sweden.
There’s each likelihood that the advance guard of his personal military is already in Scandinavia getting ready the way in which.
