Inside Wagner, Russia’s Secret War Company – News Block

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/EMXnJMCoFYI

the wagner group aka PMC‘Wagner Private Military Company’), is a Russian paramilitary organization. It is variously described as a private military company (PMC), a network of mercenariesor indeed private army of the russian president Vladimir Putin. The group operates beyond the law in Russia, where private military companies are officially prohibited. Because it operates in support of Russian interests, it receives equipment from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and uses MoD facilities for training, the Wagner Group is said to be a de facto unit of the MoD or Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. While the Wagner Group itself is not ideologically driven, various elements of Wagner have been linked to neo-Nazism and far-right extremism.

It is widely speculated that the Russian government uses the Wagner Group to allow plausible deniability, and to obscure the true casualties and financial costs of Russia’s foreign interventions. The group rose to fame during the donbas war in Ukraine, where he helped pro-Russian separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics from 2014 to 2015. His contractors have reportedly been involved in various conflicts around the world, including civil wars in Syria, Libyahe Central African Republicand Mali, often fighting on the side of forces aligned with the Russian government. Wagner operatives have committed war crimes in the areas where they are deployed. The charges include rape and robbery of civilians and torture of accused deserters.

Wagner has played an important role in the Russian invasion of Ukrainewhere, among other activities, it has been deployed to assassinate Ukrainian leaders, and has recruited prisoners for front-line combat. In December 2022, United States National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby He claimed that Wagner has 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts. Others put the number of conscripted prisoners at more than 20,000, with the total number of PMCs present in Ukraine estimated at 20,000. In 2023, Russia awarded combat veteran status to Wagner’s contractors who participated in the invasion.

After years of denying ties to the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhina businessman with close ties to Putin, admitted in September 2022 that he “founded” the paramilitary group

Attribution: wikipedia.org