Abstract executions. Torture. Rape. Recruitment of violent prisoners.
These are the hallmarks of the notorious Wagner Group – a Russian personal army firm (PMC) led by a detailed ally of Putin whose fingerprints are all around the invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner mercenaries are deployed to additional Russian pursuits overseas by doing the roles that no official army department might be related to and have earned a status for utilizing sheer pressure and brutality to attain their objectives.
The chief financier and founding father of PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin claims his contractors are deployed throughout the border to assist obtain the Russian president’s purpose – the so-called ‘denazification’ of Ukraine.
However paradoxically, the strategies employed by Wagner mercs naked a stark resemblance to these of the Dirlewanger brigade – a infamous division of the Nazis’ SS paramilitary organisation who raped, murdered and pillaged their means by Europe as they executed Adolf Hitler’s darkish designs.
Right here, MailOnline recaps the foundations of the Wagner group and their heinous crimes, evaluations the hallmarks of the reviled Dirlewanger brigade, and highlights the unsettling extent to which the 2 organisations share modus operandi.
The mercenaries of Yevgeny Prigozhin (left), a detailed Putin ally and financier of PMC Wagner, have dedicated heinous warfare crimes on populations on a number of continents. Their strategies naked a placing similarity to these of the Dirlewanger brigade, an notorious SS unit commanded by Oskar Dirlewanger (proper)
Wagner group insignia is pictured
PMC WAGNER
PMC Wagner is a mercenary group headed up by ‘Putin’s chef’ Prigozhin and led by a sinister former lieutenant colonel of Russia’s ‘Spetsnaz’ particular forces, Dmitry Utkin.
The group has for years acted as Putin’s private band of enforcers, although it maintains connections with Russia’s international army intelligence company, the GRU.
Based in 2014, Wagner contractors acquired straight to work following the annexation of Crimea, arming and organising separatist teams within the Donbas area of Ukraine and setting in movement occasions which culminated earlier this yr in Putin’s full-scale invasion of his neighbour.
Within the eight years between Crimea’s annexation and all-out warfare in Ukraine, Wagner mercs have been deployed overseas to covertly additional Russian pursuits.
They have been implicated within the Russian intervention in Syria the place they helped to prop up the Assad regime, and went on to function in nations all through Africa together with Mali, Central African Republic, Mozambique and Sudan.
Their objectives differ in every area, however assignments virtually invariably contain bolstering the army forces of the Kremlin’s most popular regimes by delivering weapons and coaching, and offering extra safety companies.
In return, Russia beneficial properties entry to pure sources, funding alternatives and geopolitical affect.
However an integral a part of most Wagner assignments is gaining management over the native inhabitants and parts hostile to the regime – one thing during which the mercenaries have proved significantly ruthless.
For instance, because the group arrived in Mali in December 2019 to help the brand new ruling army junta, incidences of violence towards Malian civilians elevated dramatically.
Within the first quarter of 2022, civilian fatalities have been higher than in all of 2021 based on information from the Armed Battle Location & Occasion Information Undertaking (ACLED).
There are a number of reviews implicating Wagner troops within the bloodbath of greater than 300 civilians within the city of Moura, and the French army claims that Wagner killed round a dozen civilians and buried them in shallow graves close to a army base in an try and discredit French forces.
Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) is the chief financier of the Wagner group and is a detailed ally of Russian President Putin (centre)
PMC Wagner mercenaries are pictured
THE DIRLEWANGER BRIGADE
The thirty sixth Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS – higher identified merely because the Dirlewanger Brigade – ranks among the many worst of an already deplorable bunch of models that made up Adolf Hitler’s savage paramilitary organisation.
The Dirlewanger brigade was fashioned in 1940 and named after its commanding officer, Oskar Dirlewanger, who fought in WWI and by all accounts was a drug-addicted intercourse offender with a penchant for violence and brutality who bounced out and in of jail.
When he was convicted for raping a 14-year-old woman in 1934, it regarded as if Dirlewanger was destined for a life behind bars, however his early army service in WWI had earned him pals in excessive locations.
Nazi Lieutenant Common Gottlob Berger – a detailed comrade of Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler – managed to get him out of jail and after Dirlewanger impressed by combating on the facet of Common Francisco Franco within the Spanish civil warfare, he was welcomed again into the Nazi fold and handed an SS unit to command as a reward.
At its inception, Dirlewanger’s brigade was nothing greater than small rag-tag group of criminals – largely poachers famend for his or her looking expertise – who have been deployed primarily to assist spherical up Jews and root out resistance fighters.
Many SS commanders strongly disliked the convicted rapist and his group of degenerates, however they proved efficient of their work and because the warfare raged on and the demand for manpower elevated, Dirlewanger was given carte blanche to broaden his ranks.
Life expectancy within the brigade was not excessive. They have been afforded little gear, have been despatched into very hostile circumstances, and it was frequent for fellow ‘wangers to kill one another over minor disagreements.
Nonetheless, over the course of the warfare the brigade grew from a gaggle of some dozen poachers to a thousands-strong battalion comprised of savages scraped from the underside of the barrel.
As their status for brutality grew, the brigade switched from pursuing Jews and manning focus camps and remodeled right into a unit of pure exterminators.
They have been despatched into to occupied nations to quell civilian uprisings and terrorise native populations by massacring large portions of individuals in essentially the most savage and brutal methods conceivable.
Favoured strategies of extermination amongst Dirlewanger’s band of killers included releasing ravenous canine amongst incapacitated civilians, barricading folks into homes and setting them alight, and beating ladies and kids to dying with rifle butts reasonably than taking pictures them.
Nazi troops considered members of the Dirlewanger brigade are pictured in Poland in 1944 en path to quell the Warsaw rebellion
The insignia of the Dirlewanger brigade options two crossed grenades on a black defend
The sheer cruelty of PMC Wagner and the Dirlewanger brigade is the obvious attribute that unifies them.
Violence and dying are mere by-products of warfare, however a torrent of proof exhibits each Wagner and ‘wanger members took a particular enjoyment of inflicting it on their foes and civilians alike.
Take the remedy of Syrian military deserter Hamadi Bouta by Wagner mercs in 2017 for instance. It isn’t shocking that the mercenaries summarily executed him, however the glee they took in doing so is sufficient to make the pores and skin crawl.
First, Bouta was compelled to the bottom at gunpoint and one merc stood on his neck to carry him in place. Then others took turns breaking his ft, arms, ankles and wrists with a sledgehammer.
Having incapacitated Bouta, the Wagner crew then took a blunt shovel, smashing and hacking on the man’s limbs till that they had severed his arms. They repeated the identical methodology to behead their captive, earlier than roasting his corpse over a hearth and taking part in soccer together with his head.
The complete ordeal was filmed and posted it on the Web for good measure.
One can safely assume that had the Web existed within the age of Oskar Dirlewanger, his troops would’ve definitely achieved the identical.
One significantly harrowing account of the ‘wanger troops’ wanton savagery got here from a survivor of the Wola bloodbath, when the crew of murderers marched right into a district of Warsaw and slaughtered civilians en-masse.
Dirlewanger’s males raped most of the Polish ladies and ladies earlier than killing them. They held their victims towards partitions or tables and brutally assaulted them, earlier than taking their bayonets and carving their captives open from neck to abdomen and watching their organs spill out.
The our bodies of Polish resistance fighters and civilians massacred by the Dirlewanger brigade in Warsaw in 1944 are pictured
Prigozhin was filmed recruiting inmates in one in all Russia’s penal colonies in September 2022
Folks sit on the desk within the workplace within the ‘PMC Wagner Centre’ in St. Petersburg
PMC Wagner additionally took inspiration from the recruitment insurance policies of commander Dirlewanger.
The Nazi madman crammed his brigade with like-minded males. Initially the group was composed of educated poachers, people who had dedicated minor crimes and disgraced Wehrmacht troops who had been booted from their very own ranks.
However as the necessity for manpower grew and the warfare rumbled on, Dirlewanger started recruiting a gradual stream of violent criminals and by the tip of the warfare had known as up hundreds of murderers, rapists and psychological asylum sufferers to serve below him in trade for his or her freedom.
The Wagner group against this has tried to carry itself out as knowledgeable organisation, having lately opened a shiny company headquarters in St. Petersburg.
However video emerged in September of Prigozhin himself visiting a sequence of penal colonies in Russia, providing an open invitation to hardened criminals to hitch his band of mercenaries.
He informed the prisoners they’d be despatched straight to the entrance strains and had a excessive likelihood of being maimed or killed, however promised to expunge their felony data and restore their freedom… in the event that they managed to outlive for six months.
And although Prigozhin isn’t a convicted rapist like Dirlewanger, he too has a sordid felony background having spent 9 years in jail on housebreaking and fraud prices.
Guests carrying army camouflage pose on the entrance of the ‘PMC Wagner Centre’, related to the founding father of the Wagner personal army group (PMC) Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the course of the official opening of the workplace block on the Nationwide Unity Day, in Saint Petersburg, on November 4, 2022
The operational parameters of the 2 teams are the place their variations grow to be obvious.
Dirlewanger’s males have been largely deployed like a pack of looking canine.
Their sole goal was to trace down and tear aside hostile uprisings in territories throughout Europe occupied by the Nazis, or just to terrorise civilian populations and impose Germany’s dominance.
The brigade was unquestionably efficient, however its members have been poorly educated troopers and on the uncommon events they got here up towards a well-armed army opponent, they have been decimated.
PMC Wagner in the meantime is extra versatile in its operations.
The mercenaries have offered coaching and safety companies for militant teams and regimes all through Africa, took an energetic function in coaching and supplying separatists within the Donbas in 2014 and at the moment are deployed in a combating capability alongside common Russian military troopers in Ukraine, amongst different issues.
However irrespective of those variations, the first focus and common method of each teams stay the identical – performing as a blunt instrument, utilizing extreme pressure to attain their objectives and recurrently committing outrageously violent actions to subjugate their foes.
This philosophy even applies inside the ranks.
Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, a former prisoner who joined the ranks of the Wagner group however later defected, was brutally murdered by his former colleagues
A Russian assassin plucked from jail by Wagner earlier this yr who later defected to the Ukrainians was recaptured and subsequently murdered by sledgehammer – a stomach-churning ordeal which was filmed and broadly disseminated by the mercenaries to exhibit their utter contempt for traitors.
There are additionally widespread reviews of Wagner mercs retaining Russian military models in test by capturing deserters, earlier than torturing and taking pictures them in devoted holding centres within the Donbas.
Dirlewanger’s males have been virtually as savage to one another as they have been their enemies.
It was commonplace for dissenters within the ranks to be executed on the spot by Dirlewanger himself or one in all his commanders.
The architect of the Holocaust himself Heinrich Himmler as soon as described the brigade as ‘medieval’ in reference to its strategies for sustaining inner order.
‘The ambiance within the regiment is usually considerably medieval in the usage of corporal punishment… if somebody pulls a face when requested whether or not we are going to win the warfare or not he’ll droop down from the desk useless as a result of the others can have shot him out of hand,’ he stated.
Because the darkish days of the Dirlewanger brigade and the march of Nazism throughout the globe, Europe has largely loved a interval of peace in contrast to every other time in human historical past.
However the warfare in Ukraine and quickly rising affect of the Wagner group function a stark reminder that the human capability for savagery and abject cruelty has not dissipated one bit.
