Brutality of Russia’s Wagner gives it lead in Ukraine war
Fierce battles in eastern Ukraine have thrown a new spotlight on Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company led by a rogue millionaire with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Wagner has spearheaded the push to jump-start Russia’s stalemated offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province. The ferocious house-to house fighting has produced some of the bloodiest encounters since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, with Wagner personnel “marching on the bodies of their own soldiers” as Ukrainian authorities put it.
The U.S. this week expanded sanctions against Wagner for its role in Ukraine and mercenary activities in Africa.
Here is a look at the Wagner Group’s history and its current role in the fighting.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, who received a 12-year prison term in 1981 on charges of robbery and assault, started a restaurant business in St. Petersburg following his release from prison. It was in this capacity that he got to know Putin, who served as the city’s deputy mayor in the 1990s.
Prigozhin, 61, used his ties with Putin to develop a catering business and won lucrative Russian government contracts that earned him the nickname of “Putin’s chef.” He later expanded to other businesses, including media outlets and an infamous “troll factory” that led to his indictment in the U.S. for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Prigozhin denied any link to the Wagner Group before he acknowledged owning the company in September. This month, he
declared he also founded, led and financed it.
Where has Wagner worked?
The Wagner Group was first spotted in action in eastern Ukraine soon after a separatist conflict erupted there in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
While backing the separatist insurgency in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Russia denied sending its own weapons and troops there despite ample evidence to the contrary. Engaging private contractors in the fighting allowed Moscow to maintain a degree of deniability.
Prigozhin’s company was called Wagner after the nickname of its first commander, Dmitry Utkin, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Russian military’s special forces.
It soon established a reputation for its extreme brutality and ruthlessness.
Along with Ukraine, Wagner personnel deployed to Syria, where Russia supported President Bashar Assad’s government in the country’s civil war. In Libya, they fought alongside forces of Libyan commander Khalifa Hifter.
The group also has operated in the Central African Republic and Mali.
Prigozhin has reportedly used Wagner’s deployment to Syria and African countries to secure lucrative mining contracts.
What is the group’s reputation?
Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner Group mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.
In December 2021, the European Union accused the group of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
Some of the reported incidents stood out in their grisly brutality.
A 2017 video posted online showed a group of armed people, reported to be Wagner contractors, torturing a Syrian man, beating him to death with a sledgehammer and cutting his head before mutilating and then burning his body. Russian authorities ignored requests by the media and rights activists to investigate the killing.