By Eric Vandenbroeck
Putin's
private army
The Wagner Group is the proxy, private army of President Putin. It has
no legal status. It is used to shore up the tottering governments of small
African nations that can prove useful to Putin's Russia..1
Western officials see the Wagner Group as a way for Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s government to spread its influence around the world, securing
valuable gold mining concessions that help Moscow circumvent sanctions and
building relationships with amenable African and Middle Eastern
governments.
The Kremlin insider known as
“Putin’s chef” personally toured Russian prisons to recruit
1,000 convicts to fight for his Wagner Group
of mercenaries in Ukraine, a Russian opposition website has
reported.
Together with the charity Russian Sitting which supports families of
convicts, the Verstka news website said that the
Wagner Group had persuaded up to 1,000 Russian criminals from 17 prisons to
sign up to fight in Ukraine in return for a salary and a presidential pardon.
Firstly, recruiters show interest in those convicted for murder and robbery,
those inmates in prison for drug and sex offenses are normally not selected.
The group has been repeatedly accused of war
crimes and human rights abuses. Despite its global
reach, much of the group’s inner workings have remained a secret to the outside
world.
Because it often supports Putin's interests or foreign policy
objectives and is reportedly trained on installations of the Russian Ministry
of Defence (MoD), several sources consider PMC Wagner
an arm's-length unit of the MoD or Russia's military intelligence agency, the
GRU.2
Days after Moscow launched its bloody war on Ukraine. A Russian cargo
plane stood on a Khartoum runway. The aircraft's manifest stated it was loaded
with cookies. Officials feared inspecting the plane would vex the
country's increasingly pro-Russian military leadership. Multiple previous
attempts to intercept suspicious Russian carriers had been stopped. Ultimately,
however, the officials decided to board the plane. Inside the hold,
colorful boxes of cookies stretched out before them. Hidden just beneath were
wooden crates of Sudan's most precious resource. Gold. Roughly one ton of it.
This is one of at least 16 known Russian gold smuggling flights out of
Sudan. The elaborate Russian scheme to plunder Sudan's riches to fortify
Russia against increasingly robust Western sanctions and buttress Moscow's war
effort in Ukraine.
The Wagner group came to global prominence during the war in Donbas in
Ukraine, where it aided separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and
Luhansk People's Republics from 2014 to 2015.
2014, Russia's meddling in Sudan's gold began in earnest after its
invasion of Crimea prompted a slew of Western sanctions. Gold shipments proved
an effective way of accumulating and transferring wealth, bolstering Russia's
state coffers while sidestepping international financial monitoring systems.
In early October 2017, the SBU said that Wagner's funding in 2017 had
been increased by 185 million rubles ($3.1 million).3
Russia actively supported Sudan's 2021 military coup, which overthrew a
transitional civilian government, dealing a devastating blow to the Sudanese
pro-democracy movement that had toppled President Omar al-Bashir two years
earlier.
Russia colludes with Sudan's beleaguered military leadership, enabling
billions of dollars in gold to bypass the Sudanese state and deprive the
country of hundreds of millions in state revenue. In exchange, Russia has
lent powerful political and military backing to Sudan's increasingly unpopular
military leadership as it violently quashes its pro-democracy movement.
At the heart of this quid pro quo between Moscow and Sudan's military
junta is a Russian oligarch and key ally of President Vladimir Putin. The
heavily sanctioned 61-year-old controls a shadowy network of companies,
including Wagner, a paramilitary group linked to alleged torture, mass
killings, and looting in several war-torn countries, including Syria and the
Central African Republic (CAR).
Putin's private army was founded by a Russian ex-Special Forces officer
aged 51, who is still in charge. It got its start fighting in Donbas in
2014.4
Here is what some of the Wagner Group mercenaries look like.5
175 Russian troops to help train the local military.175 mushroomed to
2000,6 They have committed atrocities like torture during
interrogation, arbitrary detention, mass executions, and the displacement of
240,000 people.7
The growing bond between Sudan's military rulers and Moscow has spawned
an intricate gold smuggling network. According to Sudanese official sources and
flight data, at least 16 of the flights intercepted by Sudanese officials last
year were operated by military planes that came to and from the Syrian port
city of Latakia, where Russia has a major airbase. Gold shipments also
follow a land route to the CAR, where Wagner has
propped up a repressive regime and is reported to
have meted out some of its cruelest tactics on the country's population,
according to multiple Sudanese official sources and the Dossier Center.
See also: The secretive
Russian mercenaries 'ordered to kill' Ukraine's president"
Eyewitnesses tell MEE that Syrian mercenaries were among the Russian
group forces that detained them and
killed their colleagues.
Eyewitnesses fleeing attacks by Wagner Group mercenaries in the Central
African Republic (CAR) have told Middle East Eye about the role Syrian and Arab
fighters played as the Russian network continues to
expand its influence across Africa.8
1. Meeting with
President of Central African Republic Faustin Archange Touade.
2. "In
Africa, Mystery Murders Put Spotlight on Kremlin's Reach"The New York
Times. New York. Archived from the original on 31 January 2020.
3. SBU says
Russia's Wagner mercenaries involved in Donbas war Kyiv Post, 7
October 2017.
4. Russian mercenaries using EU-trained soldiers
in Africa.
5. The eruption
of the Russian Wagner Group in Mali shakes up the geostrategic balance in North
Africa.
6. Wagner Group: Why the EU is alarmed
by Russian mercenaries in Central Africa.
7. Russian
mercenaries behind human rights abuses in CAR, say UN experts.
For updates click hompage here