What is wrong with Russia in Ukraine? The fate of the Russian mercenary corps after seven months of fighting, a challenge to Putin and Putin

The bodies of the Ukrainians lay side-by-side on the grass and the earth next to them is open. The Russian mercenaries forced the victims to look at where they had died.

There is no need to use a grenade, Ukrainian soldiers who come to collect the bodies will just bash them in. The mercenaries realized they had run out of bullets.

It could indicate an evolution in our role in the Ukraine conflict in the coming months as we become less reliant on poorly trained cannon fodder who are thrown into assaults for places like Soledar.

Limited official information about Wagner and long-standing Kremlin denials about its existence and ties to the Russian state have only added to its infamy and allure, while helping the group to cloud analysis of its exact capabilities and activities.

More than seven months of fighting have thrown a harsh light on failings in Russia’s military performance in Ukraine. Russia’s small gains, especially compared to Putin’s initial ambitious targets in the war, have come at huge cost, decimating frontline units and starving many of manpower, as well as critically important experience.

“They have more weighty, more meaningful experience than the army. The army are young soldiers who were forced to sign a contract, they have no experience,” he said.

“The Russian army cannot handle [the war] without mercenaries,” according to Gabidullin, adding that there’s “a very big myth, a very big obfuscation about a strong Russian army.”

The Prigozhin Preferred Soldier: Defining the Russian Nation, Not Just the Kremlin. The Case of Vladivy Novikov

“Wagner has been suffering high losses in Ukraine, especially and unsurprisingly among young and inexperienced fighters,” according to a senior US defense source speaking in September.

Wagner fighters have even been offered bonuses – all paid in US dollars – for wiping out Ukrainian tanks or units, according to a senior Ukrainian defense source and based on the intelligence gathered on Wagner since the start of the war by Ukrainian authorities.

Yusov said that there are more holes in the Russian front line that are being patched with Wagner. A senior US defense official explained that in comparison to Chechen fighters, who are focused on the Russian offensive around Bakhmut,Wagner is used across different front lines.

Logistic challenges have been caused by the need to supply Wagner troops with additional equipment, as well as the fact that the Ukraine has increased its attacks on Russia.

Social media and online have spread Wagner’s invitations to contact recruiters. CNN spoke to a person who offered a monthly wage of at least 240,000 rubles, or $4,000, with a business trip length of at least four months. Much of the recruiter’s message listed medical conditions that excluded applicants from joining: from cancer to hepatitis C and substance abuse.

The private military company used to be one of the most professional units in the Kremlin’s arsenal, but that is no longer the case.

Russian society and the Russian nation is being redefined by Prigozhin. Part of Prigozhin’s pitch really is that patriotic, real Russia is not the guys that go to Paris for the weekend. It’s not the cosmopolitan elites. It’s these prisoners. And if you want to get Freudian about it, he spent his 20s in prison himself. So there is part of this, I think that is about this guy saying to these people, even convicted of horrific crimes, you do your time at the front and you will get redemption and you will be released back into society and you will become part of society. That’s something people find horrifying in certain parts of Russia. It is something people find appealing in other parts of the world.

Working on Ukrainian investigations into possible Russian war crimes, Belousov fears that this lax recruiting will see the scale of war crimes increase.

The problem of the Russian intelligence services in the fight against the war crimes: How the Russian army had to find help in fight with the Nazis and other criminals

Although direct recruitment from prisons is a new step, Gabidullin said that a criminal record hadn’t been an obstacle to employment with Wagner. He himself says he had served three years in prison for murder and told CNN of prominent Wagner commanders who had served around the world with the group after prison sentences.

discontent in its ranks is part of the problem that has arisen from the struggles in Ukranian. It is vital for a group that depends on its work and salaries to know that.

According to the Ukrainian defense intelligence spokesman, the intelligence services noticed a decline in the troops’ sense of well-being from phone calls. It is a trend he has also seen in Russian troops.

The amount of professional soldiers who are willing to volunteer to fight with Wagner is decreasing because of the reduction in recruitment requirements.

The ex-commander said that the demoralization was caused by their unhappiness with the overall organization of the fighting. [the Russian leadership’s] inability to make competent decisions, to organize battles.”

For one mercenary who contacted Gabidullin for advice, that incompetence was too much. He called me and said that he wouldn’t be there anymore. I’m not taking part in this anymore,’” Gabidullin told CNN.

A fallen Wagner mercenary on the battle line: a shot in the smoke, a tribute to Prigozhin

In one clip, a fallen Wagner mercenary lies, in death, almost peacefully, his left hand gently gripping the black earth. The bodies of dead people are scattered around the battlefield and the vehicles they were in are on fire. There are shots in the smoke.

“I’m sorry, bro, I’m sorry,” the soldier’s comrade says, lightly patting his back, stripped of his shirt by the battle that killed him. We will lie next to him if they shoot us.

“They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleges. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight They buried them in the trenches that the trained dug, after shooting them in front of everyone.

Prigozhin had said that he should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners because he served in his company.

Norwegian Defense Minister Reini Medvedev: he was out for a month in Oslo and he had no regrets going back to Ukraine

There were no real tactics. There were no definite orders about how we should behave after we received orders about the adversary. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would open fire, what kind of shifts we would have…How it how it how it would turn out that was our problem,” he said.

Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says saw him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake using white camouflage to blend in, he said.

He told CNN that he did not want to go back for another tour after seeing troops being turned into cannon fodder in Ukraine.

He started off with 10 men under his command, a number that grew once prisoners were allowed to join, he said. “There were more dead bodies, and more, and more, people coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he said. I don’t know how many. They were in constant circulation. More dead bodies, more prisoners, more prisoners.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/europe/wagner-norway-andrei-medvedev-ukraine-intl/index.html

On the history of the Russian prison system in the light of a Russian defector killed by a sledgehammer: The words of Yevgeny Prigozhin

In reality, nobody wanted to pay that kind of money. He alleged that many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were “just declared missing.”

The propaganda in Russia will stop soon, the people will come up with their own ideas and a new leader will emerge.

When asked if he fears the fate meted on another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on camera with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said Nuzhin’s death emboldened him to leave.

According to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the private military contractor will have to find new fighters beyond Russia’s prison system.

On his company’s Telegram channel, Prigoyev said they had stopped the recruitment of prisoners. Those who work for us now are fulfilling all their obligations.”

Among Prigozhin’s many business ventures was a catering service that handled high-profile occasions for the Russian president. Military services were eventually included in the Catering contracts. When the first invasion of Ukrainian territory took place in 2004, the nature of Prigozhin’s business shifted.

After signing up between 40,000 and 50,000 prisoners from jails across Russia, the number of volunteers from prison may have shrunk so far that the campaign is no longer delivering.

Figures just released by the Russian Penitentiary Service may support that. There was a 6,000 decline in the prison population from November to January compared to September and October last year.

They said that dozens of prisoners with just a few days left in their sentences had signed up after visiting from Prigozyn in the summer. They said he arrived in a helicopter, made bold promises about benefits and wages, and pledged to have their criminal records erased.

Additionally, the experiences of prisoners who completed their six-month Wagner contracts may have deterred others from joining up. Prigozhin was seen last month with some of the demobilized fighters, many of whom had clearly been wounded.

One of the lawyers who spoke to Agentstvo said the decline of volunteers from among the prison population was in part due to information about Wagner’s high casualties becoming known.

The finances of Wagner’s parent company – Concord Management – have always been very opaque, with dozens of subsidiaries involved. It’s extremely difficult to ascertain the sources of cash to sustain such a dramatic increase in Wagner ranks.

In response to CNN’s request for comment on Wagner’s decision to end recruitment from Russian prisons, Prigozhin issued a sarcasm-laced reply through the Wagner Group’s VKontakte page, and joked that millions of US citizens had applied to join the mercenary group.

Sevalnev and other prisoners have been speaking to CNN and they seem to be suggesting a disturbing new strategy. They say they were directly employed by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The last message Viktor Sevalnev would send was this one. A man, who was in jail for robbery and assault, was sent from there to join the Russian military. After most of his colleagues died in an assault on a factory outside Soledar, it was the act of survival that proved fatal to Sevalnev.

He said in his last message to his wife that he feared the Russian Ministry of Defense would execute him if they took him from his hospital bed. Days later, his body was returned to his wife in Moscow, in a closed coffin.

The Storm: a prisoner’s unit set up for war, according to U.S. intelligence officials and the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu

A Ukrainian intelligence official confirmed to CNN that prisoners recently captured by Ukrainian forces had said they were directly employed by the ministry.

Usov said the development had “echoes of internal squabbling among the Russian military leadership,” and that the Russian defense hierarchy, defense minister Sergei Shoigu and the new head of the Ukraine operation, Valery Gerasimov, were creating a convict resource they could directly control through the ministry’s own private companies. The ministry had fewer convicts, but they will be used the same way ascannon fodder, by Usov.

Grainy footage obtained by Gulagu.net shows Sevalnev and his unit celebrating pre-deployment by dancing at a camp inside of Luhansk. It shows them eating and joking behind the frontlines, just one night before their assault on the Soledar factory, which will prove fatal to the majority of Sevalnev’s unit.

Sevalnev’s audio messages and pictures from the war were supplied to CNN by their publisher, but his wife didn’t want to be interviewed for the report. CNN obtained documents from the Russian court that show Sevalnev should have been in jail when he died after being convicted for theft. His grave is located outside Moscow, and records his month of death as November 2022.

He said that no one was being operated on at this time. CNN is withholding his name and that of the others for their own safety. “People walk around [the hospital] with bullet wounds, with shrapnel stuck in their legs.”

Before he was imprisoned, he described catastrophic losses. “Our batch was 130 people, but we also have many amputees, and we probably have 40 people left”, he added, saying many different groups of prisoners were added to their unit over time. He said his unit only had 15 survivors and that they were now called the Storm unit. He added that the meat grinder is what it is. He told CNN that his injuries weren’t healed in time and he had been sent back to the frontline.

“I don’t have any complaints, war is war. Some come and hear a machine gun, and then they run. It’s not good. No one has my back, so they set everyone else up, he said. This soldier was wounded severely in the leg in October, after 25 days on the front, but described how he felt no fear. “In the trench, 2-6 meters from me a shell lands, soil falls down to the trench, but I don’t feel any fear at all. I have no idea why it happens with me.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russian-army-prisoners-conscripts-ukraine-intl/index.html

The fate of three convicts in Wagner’s jailing and his imprisonment in Tanzania: a case study of an exchange student, Tarimo and Kigoga

According to relatives of three convicts who were interviewed by CNN in August, the fate of convicts employed byWagner looks no better.

His brother said that he had disappeared for four months. Another had fallen silent too, but was sending his brother his salary, collected monthly from a rented office in a sealed plastic bag. A third had appeared in a video with Prigozhin, portrayed as a lucky returnee. A friend of the man described him as zombie-like, drinking heavily and wanting to get back to the front.

If you are with theWagner Group for at least six months, you will be free even if you have 20 years left on your sentence. Rights advocates, lawyers say they have no idea on what basis he’s able to make this offer. There are no changes to the Russian legal code to suggest that it is possible to take someone out of a prison and pardon them. But the first set of people have already done that six months and some of them have been freed. So it’s clear that Prigozhin has the authority to do this.

Wagner’s recruitment has also snared prisoners who are not Russian, and may not have been convicted of a crime. An exchange student from Dar es Salaam was arrested on drugs charges in Moscow while he was on an exchange. He was convicted in March last year to seven years in jail, according to the Tanzanian foreign ministry, citing information from their Russian counterparts.

Wagner released a ghoulish video of a memorial ceremony in Tarimo’s honor at a graveyard in Molkino, western Russia, saying he died in October near Bakhmut. His body was returned to Tanzania last month, according to state TV, with the foreign ministry saying in a statement that Tarimo had accepted an offer to fight in return for money and his freedom.

His cousin Rehema Makrene Kigoga told CNN: “Since his childhood, Nemes was a very obedient boy. He was a very religious person, but not a scamp. She said they didn’t hear about his recruitment until after he died. “When he was alive, we never heard about this report but now that he’s died we are told he was arrested for drug-related offenses. As a family, it gives a lot of sadness. He never even had a dream of becoming a soldier.”

What’s up with Prigozhin: A “Putin’s Chef”? He’s been in prison for almost sure death

Back then, Prigozhin was better known as “Putin’s Chef” — a nickname he earned after building a restaurant and catering empire favored by the Kremlin from humble beginnings as an ex-con running a hot dog stand.

“The basic pitch is six months: It’s going to be horrible. It’s going to be very difficult. We’ll shoot you if you try to run away. If you don’t give your everything, we will shoot you,” Walker says. You’re free to go when you put in six months of service.

“It’s just so out of the realms of fantasy that this former convict is going to fly around prisons in his helicopter and offer people salvation for fighting for him at the front, and then lead these battalions of prisoners to their almost certain death,” Walker says. “It’s so dystopian that it’s really hard to believe. But yet it has happened.”

He is a big guy. He’s got a shaved head. He speaks in quite coarse language. This guy is not a polished one. This is not a well-educated guy. Me and my colleague, when we were researching this article, we managed to get hold of a few prisoners who are still in prison and speak with them either by text message or in other ways, and ask them how they saw this guy, why people agreed to go, why, in that case, they didn’t agree to go. And they all said to us, “We could see from this guy that he was one of us. We kind of respected him because he’d also been in prison.” … They all said, You could see that he was a former [inmate], the way he talked, the way he kind of gave his word that if they fought for him, he would give them their freedom. All of these people said, “We wouldn’t trust a normal Russian official, but this guy had something about him that made us think he was one of us.” …

He’s not sugarcoating this at all. He isn’t pretending that this will be pleasant or that it will be a holiday. He’s basically saying, look, you’re probably going to die. It’s going to be absolutely horrible. The fighting is incredibly intense. We’re going to put you at the front line. But if you survive this, I’ve got your back.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/23/1158944377/russia-ukraine-war-mercenaries-prisoners-yevgeny-prigozhin-putin

On the tragedy of Yavgeny Prigozhin: a woman’s encounter with a notorious marine attacker and her family

Maybe a couple of weeks. [of training]. The reports that we’ve had about the way the convicts are used by theWagner Group is that they’re not often used on sort of difficult strategic operations, or something specifically targeted and careful. They’re really used as cannon fodder. Talking to Ukrainians who have been on the other side of the lines and kind of watched the Wagner troops approach them, they’ve said the same thing: that it’s really strength in numbers. It’s a bit of a disregard, really, for human life. There are lots of credible reports that the people who do not like it or do not want to advance, have had executions of their own people as punishment for disobeying orders and to keep everyone else in line.

People who look into Prigozhin’s activities tend to have rather worrying, sinister things happen to them. Soon after, one of the journalists [from Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper] who did one of the biggest investigations into Prigozhin had a severed ram’s head delivered to his newsroom and a funeral wreath delivered to his home address. So it’s kind of a bit of a sort of mafia touch.

In 2015, the Navalny team did a series of investigations into how Prigozhin won these government contracts. One of Navalny’s top aides was the main investigator on these. And not long after one of these investigations came out, her husband was just arriving home to their apartment when [an] unknown assailant appeared, stabbed him in the leg with a syringe and ran off, and he then collapsed. I talked toLycbov about this during the course of preparing this article about Prigozhin. Now she is convinced that, of course, this attack was linked to her investigation and they managed to rush her husband to [the] hospital. He got very quick medical attention. She claimed that the doctors told her if it had been longer he wouldn’t have survived. It was a very strong animal tranquilizer that had been injected into his leg. … It’s possible that some pretty sinister things can happen to you if you cross Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Its head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ex-convict and self-avowed financier of the Russian paramilitary, meanwhile, is alternately being talked of as a potential rival to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin or a target of assassination.

Russia has the top ranked military and nuclear weapon, yet it relies on a personal army of billionaire convicts to do its dirty work.

What is the role of Putin in Russia’s war? How does Putin think about the Prigozhin-Wagner Group?

Is it possible for Prigozhin to use the Wagner Group to replace Putin? And most importantly for global stability: how might the Wagner Group factor into future negotiations between Russia and Ukraine?

The answers to these questions hold grave implications for the trajectory of Putin’s war – and the future relationship between Russia, the United States and NATO.

Putin was active with the KGB when he began working in politics. And in 1991 the city’s late mayor Anatoly Sobchak gave Putin the job of overseeing the municipal gambling industry, along with a variety of other municipal projects.

By then, Prigozhin had started a successful hot dog stand business and with the help of an old school chum, Boris Spektor, had started to dip his toe in the city’s mobbed up casino business too.

“We don’t know for sure what Putin thinks about Prigozhin. And Prigozhin knows that no one knows,” says Alexandra Prokopenko, an independent analyst who writes frequently on Russian government policymaking.

What should be done to deal with this? While the Biden Administration’s recent designation of the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization will empower the US and its allies to go hard after Prigozhin’s shady networks, several practical pitfalls still lay ahead.

African nations that have made cooperation with Russia and the Wagner Group a part of their lives are skeptical about the US.

There is a problem with US allies who quietly back Russia in places like Libya and Sudan. The Pentagon cited possible financial backing for the group in a 2020 inspector general report.

The sale of arms and military services from Russia is usually what the countries in the Global South want in exchange for mining rights or oil and gas production shares.

The “Wagner Center” in St. Petersburg, Russia: a place for patriotic journalists, journalists, and the adversarial media

It’s in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a gritty industrial district of St. Petersburg, a 23-story glass office tower rises — the words “Wagner Center” emblazoned across its rooftop and entrance.

“We’re interested in those who are patriotic, mostly.” says a spokeswoman during a tour of the space, which is still under renovation.

There will be a free 24-hour media lab, and snacks, for patriotic bloggers, she explains. Russian tech companies with potential military applications will be fostered by seed money. On the upper floors, luxury board rooms with a sweeping view.

“Both God and Allah can take you out of here in a casket,” says Prigozhin in a leaked video that showed him addressing convicts in a prison colony last September. I can get you out of here. I can’t promise to bring you back like that.

Prigozhin is a regular at the front lines and often in the headlines, handing out medals to soldiers and crowing about their victories.

“They’re probably the most experienced army in the entire world today,” he boasted of Wagner soldiers following their seizure of the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine last January.

Denis Korotkov, a Russian investigative journalist who broke several of the early stories on Wagner’s activities, says that it’s a classic struggle for power.

There is a cottage industry of conspiracy theories about how President Putin is using violence and infighting with his generals.

Fast forward to today and Korotkov has fled Russia amid a crackdown on independent media that threatens journalists with lengthy jail sentences for reporting “false information” about Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1160851615/russia-putin-chef-yevgeny-prigozhin-wagner-group

Prigozhin’s Army: A War in Ukraine? Viktor Litovkin’s Commentary on the 2016 Kremlin Battle

But he says Wagner’s pay-for-play army — which has grown into a force of some 50,000 men, according to Prigozhin — is now key to efforts to salvage Russia’s struggling military campaign.

The group’s name was taken from the 19th century German composer RichardWagner, and he is best known for his violins.

“We have a contract. A contract with an employer. Better in Hell is a film that celebrates the war in Ukraine and deals with a contract with Motherland and our conscience.

As Russian forces faced a series of setbacks against Ukrainian troops in the summer of 2015, Prigozhn’s media holdings have been used to criticize generals as incompetent and out of touch.

Viktor Litovkin, a military analyst with the state-run TASS news agency, says despite Wagner’s now acknowledged role in the Kremlin war effort, the mercenary force is still — formally — an outlawed militia at home.

Yet Korotkov, the journalist, says Prigozhin’s continued public role, perhaps even survival given the powerful enemies he has made, depends on his mercenaries constantly proving themselves on the battlefield — whatever the cost in lives.