Wagner Group: what is it and what is its role in the war Russia

More of 400 Russian mercenaries operate in Kyiv under the orders of kremlin to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyand his government in order to prepare the ground for Moscow to take control, ‘The Times’ has revealed.

This week, members of the so-called Wagner group were deployed in eastern Ukraine, according to British Defense Ministry sources. Among them, they are responsible for this organization prepared to carry out combat operations. Russian forces concentrate their efforts on the eastern donbas regionwhere they face the most equipped and trained sector of the Ukrainian forces.

The Wagner group is a private militia led by an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which operates as an independent branch of the state. At the beginning of the war, he carried mercenaries from Africa on a mission to behead the Zelensky government in exchange for a hefty financial bonus.

Information about this mission reached the Ukrainian government and, shortly after, kyiv declared a harsh 36 hour curfew to “sweep” the city in search of Russian saboteurs. The Ukrainian authorities warned the civilians, when declaring the curfew, that they would be seen as agents of the Kremlin and risk being “liquidated” if they left their shelters.

A source close to the group’s activities, indicates ‘The Times’, confirmed that by January between 2,000 and 4,000 mercenaries had arrived in Ukraine.

Some of them were sent to the disputed eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, while another 400 entered from Belarus and headed towards the capital.

In addition to Zelensky, the The blacklist contains 23 other people, including the prime minister, the cabinet, the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, and his brother Wladimir, both popular former boxing champions who have joined the military fight against the invaders.

The mercenaries boast that they know exactly where the president and his colleagues are in kyiv and can apparently track them through their mobile phones.

Wagner is a private military company and has been closely associated with Putin’s projects around the world.

Is property of Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch cknown as ‘Putin’s cook’, and the group has conducted covert operations in Africa and the Middle East, and was also responsible for fomenting trouble in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

“They are very effective,” said General Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander of the Joint Forces Command.

“They can come out of the shadows, do very violent things and then disappear again, without it being obvious who was responsible. They are not directly linked to the Russian government and therefore they can deny it,” he added.

The sources indicated that apparently had been informed about the planned invasion of Ukraine in December, long before the Russian military was informed.

The Wagner Group, a kind of Russian Blackwater, it’s a Russian private paramilitary mini-army that has allegedly participated in the last two wars Russia has been involved in.

According to various sources, the Wagner Group has its operations center in a military base in the south of Russia; and that several of his mercenaries have received award state officials.

The Wagner Group, according to various investigations, revolves around its boss, Dimitri Utkina former member of the Russian special forces retired in 2013. He is the one who named the militia. Fan of aesthetics and ideology NaziUtkin decided on ‘Wagner’, the favorite composer of Hitler.

But his filiation for the Nazi Germany it does not end here: according to the newspaper ‘Fontanka’, Utkin, while fighting in the Ukraine for the pro-Russian rebels, put on a helmet in the style of the one worn by the Wehrmacht during world war II. After fighting in that war, Utkin is supposed to have gone to Syria.

In Russia there is no law that prohibits or allows the existence of private military groups, but the Kremlin has used the Wagner Group as shock force in Syria and in the war in Donbas. In this way, very few Russian regular soldiers die in combat.

«Russia does not recognize it, but we found an official document in which the Wagner Group was mentioned and it was signed by the very same Vladimir Putin», says Ruslán Leviev, opponent and researcher.

But if these mercenaries are dropping like flies, why are Russian citizens still fighting in them? The answer, according to ‘Fontanka’, is the salary they receive —some 3,000 euros per month— and the lack of decent work in Russia. “Apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg no work nowhere. If you’re lucky, and almost nobody is, you can find a job with a salary of 200 euros. So there is a queue to join the militia”, says a paramilitary.