Russia is suffering such heavy personnel losses in Ukraine that it is struggling to conduct offensive operations and is increasingly seeking to generate additional troops, according to a recent UK military defence intelligence update.
Not only is Russia redeploying forces from as far afield as its Eastern Military District, Pacific Fleet and Armenia, the report states, it is increasingly seeking to recruit mercenaries from Syria and private military companies.
Towards the end of February two groups had already been sent to Ukraine to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky, ostensibly tasked by the Kremlin: special forces from Chechnya and mercenaries, of whom at least 400 were operating in Kyiv. Ukraine alleges these mercenaries are former Spesnatz, Russian special forces.
Several intelligence sources confirm reports in London’s The Times that mercenaries have been flown into Ukraine from several countries in Africa where they have been working for the Russian Wagner group — a shadowy private militia with a trail of human rights abuses that seeks to extend Russia’s influence in conflict zones. (Zelensky has reportedly survived at least three assassination attempts.)
The man allegedly backing the group, the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, has attained near mythical status in Russia as well as the West in just a few years. Known as “Putin’s chef”, he is allegedly one of the president’s confidantes in charge of some of the Kremlin’s most delicate operations: developing a private military company; destabilising foreign countries through a troll farm (its activities include meddling in elections); and extending Russia’s influence in Africa.
Prigozhin’s name is one of 28 publicly released by the US on a list of 50 individuals who are priorities for a multilateral task force to tackle Russian oligarchs and freeze their assets.
Russian private security companies such as the Wagner Group purport to redress complex local military and terrorism conflicts with which African governments have struggled.
— Federica Saini Fasanotti, senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution
The EU has repeatedly implemented sanctions against Prigozhin and other individuals linked to Wagner. “The Wagner Group has recruited, trained and sent private military operatives to conflict zones around the world to fuel violence, loot natural resources and intimidate civilians in violation of international law, including international human rights law,” the EU stated in December.
It is involved in serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings, or in destabilising activities in some of the countries it operates in, including Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Ukraine’s Donbas region, the EU alleges.
Wagner’s current involvement in Ukraine brings the group a bloody full circle.
Putin’s fury
Ukrainian intelligence believes Putin’s invasion was motivated to some extent by his desire to return former Ukranian president Viktor Yanukovych to power. Yanukovych has been living in exile in Russia after he fled Ukraine in 2015. He is believed to be in Belarus, ready to take over in Ukraine.
Yanukovych, an avid Putin supporter who hails from the Russian-speaking Donbas region, was Ukraine’s president from 2010 to 2014. He was forced out after widespread protests following his decision to ally Ukraine with Moscow rather than the EU. Yanukovych was also accused of running a corrupt administration, favouring a cabal of Ukrainian oligarchs and amassing a personal fortune. (He was also briefly president in 2003 before he was forced to resign in the so-called Orange Revolution.)
Putin was incandescent and he later described the toppling of Yanukovych as “anti-constitutional armed coup” orchestrated by the US and supported by Europe in an opinion piece in the German publication Die Zeit.
In this period Russia started a cyber war and, according to the defence intelligence publication Janes, employed activities including distributing misinformation and psychological warfare. Before its invasion of Crimea in 2014 Russia infiltrated social media and spread Russian propaganda. These information operations were considered to be the crucial first steps in the Crimea and Donbas region and, even though they followed the Soviet “desinformatsiya” pattern, the use of technology made the old strategy much more effective.
2014 was significant for another reason. Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine were getting support from soldiers without any insignia: mercenaries allegedly made up of mostly military veterans and ultranationalists, backed by Russian intelligence.
Thousands of these mercenaries were sent to eastern Ukraine to help foment war and establish the “independent” republics of Donbas and Luhansk.
This group was allegedly under the command of a man called Dmitry Utkin, who had served in Russian foreign military intelligence, the GRU, until 2013. This was the first military operation by the loose coalition later known as the Wagner Group.
According to Russian media Utkin worked for a private security company, Moran Security Group, and the Slavonic Corps, Russian mercenaries who were sent to Syria in 2013, after his stint in military intelligence. The Russian investigative journalism group Fontanka alleges Utkin is a Nazi sympathiser and that he named the group after Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favourite composer. Allegedly his call sign in Spesnatz was “W” for Wagner.
But the money and strategy, the rumour goes, is all thanks to Prigozhin.
Putin’s chef
Prigozhin grew up poor in Leningrad. He had just been released from prison after serving nine years for crimes including robbery when the Soviet Union collapsed.
He opened a hot dog stand, the legend goes, and was so successful that a sought-after boat restaurant followed. In 2001 two VIPs came to dine and Prigozhin personally served Putin, the then new president, and Japanese PM Yoshirō Mori. Soon after Prigozhin was awarded lucrative catering contracts by the Kremlin and in 2003 he prepared the food for Putin’s birthday celebrations.
Contracts to provide meals to schools and troops followed and Prigozhin became one of Russia’s wealthiest individuals. (He has the contract to supply rations to Russian forces in Ukraine.) In addition he chairs the Patriot media group.
Prigozhin denies any links with Wagner and being close to Putin. In fact both Putin and he deny the existence of the group — and on paper, at least, they are correct. No such company is registered and there are no offices or recruitment. Prigozhin dismisses the allegations against him as Western flights of fancy, but in 2020 the US imposed sanctions against him and his Internet Research Agency (also known as Glavset or the Trolls of Olgino) after Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Syria
In 2017 a man called Hamadi Bouta, a Syrian army deserter, was kidnapped by a handful of Russian mercenaries before they casually filmed what came next. Video clips that subsequently found their way to social media show the mercenaries laughing and joking while pounding Bouta’s bloodied hands and feet with a hammer. He writhes on the ground and screams in pain. Then they kick him. Another clip shows them cutting off his hands and head with a spade before setting his corpse alight.
Bouta’s family quest for justice has been in vain.
Russia’s military deployment in Syria officially started in 2015. Unofficially Wagner allegedly deployed at least 2,500 troops in what was likely to be their first operation after eastern Ukraine.
The advantage for the Kremlin, which flatly denies the existence of the mercenaries, is that it doesn’t have to account for fatalities. Then there is the issue of deniability — if the mercenaries commit human rights abuses, Russia can claim its hands are clean. Not that Russia is that concerned about the conventions of warfare in its attempt to prop up Bashir al-Assad’s regime. Civilian targets there have long included schools, bakeries and hospitals.
This foreshadowed current events in Ukraine, as well as its tactics used elsewhere. Yemen, Libya and Sudan followed.
Wagner and Africa
The film Granit starts with a flashback to 1986.
Samora Machel, then president of Mozambique, dies along with some Mozambican passengers and Russian crew members when their flight crashes. The video states as fact that SA had conspired to bring down the plane. (Though there are suspicions that SA may have been involved, no conclusive evidence to this effect has ever been found.)
One of the Mozambican survivors is convinced the Russians are gods and saviours — and the movie’s premise is indeed that Russia’s mission is to save Africa’s peace-loving people from Western aggression.
The film is Russian and very melodramatic. When it returns to the present day, there is an insurgency in northern Mozambique. Russian defence instructors are on their way from Sudan to answer a cry for help from the Mozambican government. This they seemingly do out of goodwill, explains the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies’ Jack Margolin. Margolin is fluent in Russian.
The blood flows in this C-grade Steven Seagal knock-off. It features a South African enemy, a Colonel Lionel who acts for the US against the Mozambican government and who, in a bizarre twist, was also involved in Machel’s assassination. (This is an apparent reference to Col Lionel Dyck, a Zimbabwean private military contractor who helped the Mozambican government against insurgents in Cabo Delgado province. In 1986 he was still serving in the Zimbabwean defence force.)
In Granit Lionel actually supports the bloodthirsty rebels and he even appoints a Che Guevara lookalike as their leader. Eventually the philanthropic Russians inspire the Mozambican soldiers to fight bravely against the insurgents.
In reality Wagner’s mercenaries failed miserably in Mozambique and left tail between their legs after Russian soldiers were ambushed and beheaded. Others were shot dead inside their military base.
The movie, which was filmed in Bangui in the Central African Republic (CAR), is one of at least three depicting Wagner’s heroics and giving unique insight into how Russia sees itself in the world. The film rights are owned by a company called Aurum, which was founded by Prigozhin. (The bloodthirsty Solntsepyok’s plot involves Russian hero mercenaries taking revenge in a fictional event after Ukrainian soldiers brutally murdered Russians.)
Tourist, the precursor to Granit, is set in the CAR. Once again Russian heroes save locals from Western exploitation. Ironically both Russia and the CAR have denied any Russian involvement in military operations, claiming they are only providing training. The UN, however, expressed concern about Russian mercenaries’ connection to serious human rights violations, including rape and kidnapping.
In 2018 three Russian journalists who had been investigating Wagner’s links to the Kremlin were killed in the CAR.
The Russian deployment in the CAR gave them a foothold in the region. Moscow is believed to have signed an agreement with the CAR’s President Faustin-Archange Touadéra granting them access to the country’s natural resources. They have recently also signed a contract with Mali.
Federica Saini Fasanotti, senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organisation in Washington DC, argues that Putin seeks to create African dependencies on Moscow’s military assets and access to African resources, targeting countries that have fragile governments but are often rich in important raw materials such as oil, gold, diamonds, uranium and manganese.
“Russian private security companies such as the Wagner Group purport to redress complex local military and terrorism conflicts with which African governments have struggled,” she writes. “They also offer to these governments the ability to conduct counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations unconstrained by human rights responsibilities, unlike the US, allowing African governments to be as brutish in their military efforts as they like. In turn, Russia seeks payment in concessions for natural resources, substantial commercial contracts, or access to strategic locations, such as airbases or ports.”
An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Wagner contractors operate in Africa. The vast majority, about 95%, are Russian.
Out of Africa
Several sources claim dozens of mercenaries are heading to Ukraine from the CAR, Mali and Sudan. Rumours abound that those who are staying behind are warning their hosts not to support Ukraine.
Last year the BBC published an investigation into the contents of a Wagner tablet discovered in Libya that provided evidence of the mercenaries’ involvement in the mining and booby-trapping of civilian areas. One ex-fighter told the BBC there were no clear rules of conduct. If a captured prisoner had no knowledge to pass on, or could not work as a “slave”, then “the result is obvious”.
“No one,” he said, “wants an extra mouth to feed.”
This is the mentality of many mercenaries returning to Ukraine.
This article first appeared in VryeWeekblad.
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