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New Report Exposes Brutal Methods of Russias Wagner Group, Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by, The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were, Close to Russian government but nominally independent, private military contractors give the Kremlin a degree of plausible deniability and have complicated efforts by Western policymakers to formulate a response. Family members of a former Russian prison inmate, who defected to Ukraine after being recruited by the Kremlin-linked private military group Wagner, have expressed horror over his apparent execution after a gruesome video emerged on Friday that showed him being repeatedly struck with a sledgehammer. American military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops. By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. This style of hybrid warfare has become a cornerstone of Russias efforts to project its interests abroad. In 2018, American authorities filed criminal charges against Prigozhin for alleged financial ties to the internet troll farm accused of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The firefight was described by the Pentagon as an act of self-defense against a unit of pro-Syrian government forces. What will another year of war look like? The group is often described as President Vladimir Putin s off-the-books troops. It operates in a situation of opacity, theres a real lack of transparency and thats the whole point, said Sorcha MacLeod, chair of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, which has scrutinized the group. A BBC Russian investigation in 2018 highlighted the deaths of Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria. A U.S. military convoy drives on a Syrian highway on September 29, 2017. The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were identified by the Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta as private military security contractors for the so-called Wagner Group. Flashes from tank muzzles, antiaircraft weapons and machine guns lit up the air. Alexander Malkevich, whose employees were detained in Libya, is part of Moscows efforts to create a concert of chaos around the globe. Jessica Chen Weiss, formerly a senior advisor for policy planning at the State Department under the Biden administration, makes the case that the United States is becoming consumed by competition with China, a strategy that could lead to dangerous conflict. Gruesome Soundtrack Their presence, in the eastern region known as Donbas that is home to Russia-backed separatist groups, raises concerns, given the groups history. Some of the Green Berets and Marines took aim from exposed hatches. Russia. Wagner is estimated to have as many as 2,500 men in Syria. In its report published late on November 20, Novaya Gazeta identified one of the men shown in the clip as a former police officer from the southern Russia region of Stavropol who promised to "represent the interests of Russia abroad" in a form he allegedly submitted to Vagner upon joining the organization in 2016. Boutas slaying is symptomatic of the accountability vacuum in which the Wagner Group operates. The private Russian military force, which has close ties to President Vladimir Putin and has been used in war zones across the world, is expanding its presence in Ukraine. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Late last November, videos of a gruesome killing went viral on Russian social networks. Then as now, the Kremlin denied any ties to Vagner, but the incident put major pressure on Russia to explain the presence of private mercenaries. He has been referred to as Putins chef because of his catering business, which has staged elaborate state banquets for Mr. Putin. American intelligence officials say that the Wagner Group, known by the nickname of the retired Russian officer who leads it, is in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government. With Russia suffering heavy losses, according to U.S. intelligence, Mr. Putin is sending battle-hardened reinforcements with experience into Ukraine, according to experts, including Jeremy Fleming, the director of Britains electronic surveillance agency. The mercenaries earn of a share of the production proceeds from the oil fields they reclaim, officials said. The Defense Ministry denied any Russian uniformed personnel were killed. A disturbing clip of an execution in Syria has prompted a Russian newspaper to investigate links between the torturers and the shadowy Wagner Group. The U.S. government has said that the organization is financed by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and a close associate of Mr. Putin. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Putins Russian Critics AreGrowingEver Louder, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart, The State Departments Lack of Diversity Is Bad for U.S. Under a 2019 U.S. law known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, anyone connected to war crimes in Syria under Assads regime could be subject to sanctions. Their structure allows them to have plausible deniability and to create distance between the Russian state and the group, she said. Is the United States becoming protectionist? Nuzhin, 55, had been serving a 24-year prison sentence for a murder he committed in 1999 when he was freed in July and conscripted into Wagner, a notorious military group run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful Russian businessman and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. According to Jesr, the man was captured by Russian forces after a desertion attempt from the Syrian Army. Syrian authorities arrested Bouta as he crossed the border and turned him over to members of the Syrian military. U.S. forces clashed with pro-Syrian government forces, the majority of which are believed to have been Russian mercenaries, in Syrias Deir Ezzor province in 2018. The post didnt provide much commentary, only a link to a graphically violent video shot with a shaky hand on a cell phone that showed several Russian speaking men dressed in desert military uniforms taking turns beating a man who has since been identified as Bouta with a sledgehammer. Russian trucks heading to Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich Syrian province that borders Iraq, last year. Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors. In April, the French army released imagery from drone cameras that showed Wagner Group soldiers laying out dead bodies in the sand near a French army base in Mali after the French withdrew. Among the EU's latest package of Russian sanctions, members of the Wagner Group mercenary company were included for alleged crimes committed in Africa. Around 300 Wagner fighters are believed to have been killed or wounded in a firefight with U.S.-led Kurdish forces in Syria in February 2018. If for some reason the case does not go forward in Moscow, Darwish said, it is likely that he, Novikov and others will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. At one point in the video, a second severed head can be seen lying on the ground. A member of the group can be overheard discussing whether they should cover their faces before one says theres no point, as the video is not going to go anywhere., Amy Mackinnon is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. A similar melding of public and nominally private entities was used in 2016 in a bid to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, with Russian military hackers stealing emails and documents from the Hillary Clinton campaign while the so-called troll factory, allegedly funded by Prigozhin, sought to fuel divisions between American voters. What will another year of war look like? Its mercenaries have also fought in Ukraine and the Central African Republic, and are said to be active in Libya, Sudan and Mozambique. At this point, members of the group Bouta was traveling with notified Boutas brother-in-law, who was in Lebanon at the time, that the Syrian military had taken Bouta into custody. The Paris-based Syrian investigative news site Jesr Press was able to piece together the most detailed account of Boutas life and how he came to be captured by Russian mercenaries. The company is widely believed to be controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a longtime associate of Vladimir Putin who once served as the Russian president's chef. The newspaper also offered to hand over materials acquired to Russian law enforcement. Captured wounded fighters of Russias Wagner mercenary group: Ilya, 30, left, and Mikhail, 35, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Monday. Indeed, this is a repeat of what happened 20 years ago, when enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions committed during the armed conflict in the Northern Caucasus were likewise not investigated.. A handful of Marines ran ammunition to machine guns and Javelin missile launchers scattered along the berms and wedged among the trucks. Diplomacy, To Save France, Macron Is Dividing Europe, The United States Has Never Recovered From the Falklands War. A recent investigative report on the Wagner Group's activities in Africa surmised that it "has rapidly become the most influential form of Russian engagement in Africa today," politically, economically and militarily. Ahrar Houran, which he helped to found, confirmed the news. As the videos of Boutas torture and beheading were circulated, they became a rallying point for the social networks that have coalesced around Russias mercenary activity abroad. Advertisement. It was not immediately clear who was behind the video, or how Nuzhin would have ended up back in Russia. Russias Wagner Group have as much power in Kremlin as ministers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. This has forced us, as human rights defenders, to turn to Russian investigative authorities, Novikov said. But, as in many other developing countries, Syrias nationalized energy sector is highly reliant on external backing from foreign firms for capital-intensive upstream investment in exploration and development. Increasingly, theyve become more formalized and have started acting more like Western military contractors. In addition to their involvement in Syria, Libya, Central African Republic and Ukraine, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, exerting Russian influence by proxy, doing the bidding of authoritarian leaders and, at times, seizing oil and gas fields or securing other material interests. According to one Russian human rights group, Wagner has recruited more than 20,000 prisoners to fight in Ukraine so far. With Putins help, Assad has constrained the capacity of the United Nations to deliver health supplies in opposition-controlled territory, which faces rising risk of the coronavirus. The group reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a retired Russian military officer. The legal case in Moscow turns on four separate video clips depicting several Russian-speaking men beating, decapitating, and burning a badly mutilated man at the al-Shaer gas plant, a central node in a multimillion-dollar joint oil and gas deal forged between the Syrian government owned General Petroleum Corporation and Stroytransgaz, a Russian state-run hydrocarbon engineering firm headed by Gennady Timchenko, a longtime Putin associate. [20] [29] [30]Utkin um veterano da Primeira e Segunda Guerra na Chechnia.At 2008 ou 2013, Utkin fez parte da Spetsnaz (foras especiais) do GRU onde chegou a patente de tenente-coronel Russia and the US have both been on repeated diplomatic missions to Africa since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, trying to win allies and explain their positions as the fighting has serious knock-on impacts for food and fuel prices for some of the poorest parts of the world. Stroytransgaz, or STG, the company headed by Kremlin-insider Timchenko, is one of the largest such investors, and in February it secured a $22 million production sharing agreement with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, according to The Syria Report, an online journal that tracks economic developments in the country. .. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian revolution last year, a complaint against the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner was filed in Russian courts, the first case ever brought against the group. The brief filed on Friday in connection with Boutas case contends that the Russian government holds effective control over the Russian private military contingent that killed Bouta during operations at the al-Shaer gas plant. Back at the mission support site, the Green Berets and Marines were preparing a small reaction force roughly 16 troops in four mine-resistant vehicles in case they were needed at the Conoco plant. Claiming to have uncovered one of the mercenaries, it wants Moscow to step in. The Novaya Gazeta report added more clarity to an incident that prompted anger and confusion when evidence of it first surfaced. The entity first emerged in 2014, during Russias annexation of Crimea. environment on the planet from our adversaries, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of United States Special Operations Command, said recently, referring to electronic warfare. The reports revelations have chilling implications, as Russian mercenaries motivated by both money and far-right ideology are increasingly operating unchecked in some of the worlds most fragile countries. A video of a second apparent execution using a sledgehammer was posted by a Wagner-linked blogger on Monday. Delivered Wednesday. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? The day began with little hint of the battle that was about to unfold. In the video, Nuzhin was shown lying down with his head taped to a brick wall as an unidentified man in combat clothing hits him with a sledgehammer. Aircraft across the region were placed on alert, military officials said. The researchers social network analysis also revealed substantial cross-affiliation with Rusich, a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has operated in eastern Ukraine. I'm not afraid," he said. Thousands of Russian contractors fought in Syria alongside a 2015 military intervention by Putin that helped turn the tide in the countrys civil war and saved the government of Bashar al-Assad. Prigozhin, who had been charged by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller in early 2018, was slapped with new U.S. Treasury Department sanctions on September 30, in an announcement that also included photographs of three jets and a 122-foot yacht that purportedly belongs to Prigozhin or his companies. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. Media and think tank reports indicate that natural gas extraction by EvroPolis, a firm Prigozhin holds a stake in according to U.S. authorities, generated about $162 million from al-Shaer and several other nearby gas fields in 2017, the same year Bouta was killed. Is it? Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said he had not had time to watch the video. Jessica Chen Weiss, formerly a senior advisor for policy planning at the State Department under the Biden administration, makes the case that the United States is becoming consumed by competition with China, a strategy that could lead to dangerous conflict. Commanders briefed pilots and ground crews. The case is being lodged jointly by lawyers and advocates associated with Darwishs organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow, and the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris. Expanding Influence Investigative paper wants atrocities of alleged Russian mercenaries in Syria probed after graphic VIDEO Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) serves food to Vladimir Putin in 2011. A report published earlier this month by the Washington-based New America Foundation and Arizona State University said that Moscow's reliance on private military companies had brought benefit to the Kremlin, including a cheaper, quicker, and more clandestine way of expanding Russia's influence. Wagner has been reported as operating in a number of nations hit by conflict. Kremlin-linked private military group posted video on Telegram of apparent execution in Russia of Yevgeny Nuzhin. The documents described the fighters as a pro-regime force, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The lawsuit marks the first known attempt to bring to account anyone linked to the highly secretive network of covert operators financed and managed by close inner-circle associates of President Vladimir Putin. The American commandos took cover, then ran behind dirt berms to fire anti-tank missiles and machine guns at the advancing column of armored vehicles. The prospect of Russian military forces and American troops colliding has long been feared as the Cold War adversaries take opposing sides in Syrias seven-year civil war. A few of the commandos, including Air Force combat controllers, worked the radios to direct the next fleet of bombers flying toward the battlefield. Contacted by Novaya Gazeta, relatives and friends of the Russian man, named as Stanislav D., either did not respond or denied any affiliation with him. Russia has played all sides in the conflict to get a seat at the negotiating table. "Yet, [private military companies] also pose substantial risks for a regime determined to keep a lid on domestic outcry over its military adventurism and to manage blowback," the report said. These soldiers are likely to be used as cannon fodder to try to limit Russian military losses, he has said. After working for a time in Lebanon, Bouta decided to return to his family in Deir Ezzor. Hes a graduate of Harvards Davis Center and a recipient of New York University's Reporting Award and the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Journalism Award. Their shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, observers say. The United States troops on the ground, now roughly 40 in all, braced their defenses as the mercenaries left their vehicles and headed toward the outpost on foot. One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a wide-ranging conversation with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the Biden administrations trade and economic policiesand the impacts they have on the world. The video published by Novaya Gazeta appears to be just one instalment of a series of clips that record the same incident at the hands of Russian-speaking fighters, including the victim's torture, mutilation, and, ultimately, decapitation. 'There's no one to help': Russian mercenary industry's toll on families, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. "I'm at risk. The small team of American troops was not harmed. Its not clear how the videos ended up online or why the perpetrators chose to document the killing. Marine rocket artillery was fired from the ground. The men, who appear to be drunk in the video, sought to hide their identities by covering their faces. Yevgeny Prigozhin is the man behind a mercenary force fighting for Russia in Ukraine. That person has not been identified. The details of the Feb. 7 firefight were gleaned from interviews and documents newly obtained by The New York Times. An analysis of Russian social media groups for followers of the Wagner Group as well as the friend networks of individuals who shared details of Boutas murder online revealed a burgeoning online movement of Russian ultranationalists with an abiding interest in mercenary culture who claimed to have served in Russian military units, according to the research by Frontline Forensics, which was published by New America. The documents reveal that the company. In leaked documents, he wrote that he joined Wagner in 2016 to protect the interests of the Russian Federation abroad. Online messages sent to him and his wife by the Guardian were not immediately returned on Thursday. They provide the Pentagons first public on-the-ground accounting of one of the single bloodiest battles the American military has faced in Syria since deploying to fight the Islamic State. An hour later, the enemy fighters had started to retreat and the American troops stopped firing. The Guardian checked the results independently using the facial recognition software FindClone and found the same results. The growing mass of troops the Conversation about Ukraine is Cracking Apart, the state Departments Lack of Diversity Bad. Hide their identities by covering their faces, officials said York Times social... A U.S. military convoy drives on a Syrian highway on September 29, 2017 theyve more... 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