Prigozhin appeals to public as Wagner continues recruiting
Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin called on the Russian public to stand up for his Wagner paramilitaries yesterday as the group continued to recruit troops for the war in Ukraine, in apparent contradiction of the terms of a truce with the Kremlin.
Speaking on the Telegram messaging app for the second time since leading an aborted insurrection last month, Prigozhin said “we need your support more than ever”, as he thanked backers inside Russia.
Also yesterday Wagner was actively seeking recruits to train in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, according to the group’s ads on Telegram.
The moves come in spite of an agreement, whose details were revealed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, by which Wagner fighters were supposed to choose between signing contracts with the Russian Defence Ministry, going home or following Prigozhin into exile in Belarus.
However, Prigozhin stopped short of criticising the Kremlin directly.
A Wagner recruiter contacted on the group’s hotline said yesterday that various “job openings” were available, including in the “prestigious” storm unit fighting in “the zone of the special military operation” — a reference to the war in Ukraine. Training would last for three weeks in the village of Molkino in southern Russia before deployment, the recruiter said.
Those who want to join Wagner were told to delete all social media accounts because the recruitment process had “become more complicated”, the Wagner official said. Asked what the next steps were, the recruiter suggested no disruption had occurred after the attempted insurrection: “Why do you believe the news? If something was not right, we would not be having this conversation right now.”
He added that a recruit would sign a contract with Wagner, not the Russian Defence Ministry. “We have nothing to do with them. Have you seen the statements of Evgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin]? We will not sign any contracts with them.”
Prigozhin was careful not to challenge the Kremlin explicitly in his voice message, while he defended his “march of justice” towards Moscow last month as an effort to fight traitors and “mobilise our society”. “Soon you will see our next victories at the front,” he added.
He continued to remain silent on his own whereabouts. President Alexander Lukashenko said last week that Prigozhin had flown to Belarus, following the deal the Belarus leader had brokered.
But the warlord’s plane has since flown several times from Belarus to Moscow and St Petersburg and back again, Flightradar24 data shows,
A measure has been introduced in the United States House to ban imported products containing minerals critical to electric vehicle batteries but mined through child labour and other abusive conditions in Congo, where China has enormous mining stakes.
The bill targets China, which sponsor Republican Representative Chris Smith says uses forced labour and exploits children to mine cobalt in the impoverished but resource-rich central African country.
Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a mineral used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, a key pillar of President Joe Biden’s climate plans. China controls the majority of the cobalt mines in Congo, strengthening Beijing’s position in the global supply chain for electric vehicles and other products.
“On the backs of trafficked workers and child labourers, the Chinese Communist Party is exploiting the vast cobalt resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo to fuel its economy and global agenda,” Smith’s office said in a statement following the bill’s introduction on Saturday.
The legislation comes amid strained ties between the US and China. Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator ” during a campaign fundraiser last month, leading to outcry from Beijing. That has followed tensions over a Chinese surveillance balloon that the US government shot down, US-led restrictions on China’s access to advanced computer chips, and the status and security of Taiwan.
But the Biden administration is looking to ease those tensions with a visit to China this week from US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, following Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day stop in Beijing last month.
China holds a 68 per cent stake in Sicomines, the copper and cobalt joint venture with Congo’s state mining firm Gecamines, following a 2008 infrastructure-for-minerals deal, which Congo now is seeking to review over concerns it gets too little benefit from the arrangement.
Congo is also Africa’s top producer of copper, and lithium was recently found there — also key components of EV batteries.
The extraction of the minerals has been linked to child and exploitative labour, environmental abuses and safety risks. In a 2016 report, Amnesty International blamed Chinese firms for child labour in Congo’s cobalt mining and multinational tech firms for failing to address human rights issues in their supply chains.
The US legislation would prohibit importing “goods, wares, articles, or merchandise containing metals or minerals, in particular cobalt and lithium and their derivatives, mined, produced, smelted or processed, wholly or in part, by child labour or forced labour in the DRC,” Smith’s office said.
The measure also would require the President to identify and impose sanctions on foreign actors who facilitate and exploit child labour in Congo.