The Wagner Group is a Russian private military security company, made up of mercenaries, owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch known as the “chef” of the president, Vladimir Putin, and who has spread his tentacles throughout Africa and Ukraine.
Was created during the conflict that broke out in eastern Ukraine with the invasion and subsequent annexation by Russia of the Crimean peninsula in 2014as Prighozhin recognized.
the group too has fought during the civil war in Syria next to the government troops of President Bashar al-Assad, in turn supported by Russia.
Likewise, the alleged presence of mercenaries from the Wagner group to instruct the Malian forces and protect the government has been the subject of international controversy, as reported by the Efe Agency.
invasion of Ukraine
Four days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 28, 2022, The Times revealed that some 400 members belonging to Wagner had brought kyiv to various thousands of mercenaries from Africa the previous month, on a mission to decapitate the government of Volodymyr Zelensky and other politicians in exchange for a hefty financial bonus.
Various analysts pointed out that Russian mercenaries had been informed about the planned invasion of Ukraine in December, long before the Russian military was informed.
In March 2022, the Wagnerites also suffered sanctions from the British Government.
In the framework of Russia’s war against Ukraine, on October 23, 2022, Russia began building defense lines in two border regions with Ukraine, Kursk and Belgorod, as well as in the annexed Ukrainian province of Lugansk, which join the the fortified lines erected by the Wagner group in Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine, to prevent the advance of the Kiev troops, with excavations and dragon’s teeth, in what has already received the nickname of “Prigozhin line” or “Wagner line”.
Regarding Wagner’s role in the Ukrainian war, in December 2022 kyiv denounced the killing of eight members of the same family by the group in the town of Makiivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
In parallel, on January 20, 2023, the US State Department also denounced that the group was making “illicit profits” in Africa that could be used to finance the war in Ukraine.
In this same framework, the US estimated that more than 30,000 mercenaries from the Wagner group had died since the start of the war. Prigozhin has so far admitted 20,000 mercenaries fallen in the eastern town of Bakhmut alone.
With the war progressing, the group held a standoff with the Russian Defense Ministry in February to supply ammunition to its fighters in Bakhmut.
On May 25, 2023, the Group’s mercenaries began to withdraw and left Bakhmut to Russian regular troops, after announcing their capture days before, a withdrawal that began in the suburbs of the devastated city and was confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
Penalties for violating human rights
The first sanctions They came to Wagner in December 2021 from the European Union (EU) for serious violations of human rights in several African countries, including Mali, the Central African Republic or Libya, where they have also been deployed.
In this context, the Libyan Military General Prosecutor’s Office linked them to the murder of 26 students at the Tripoli Military College, the bombing of the illegal immigration headquarters in Tajoura, which caused the death of 63 emigrantsand the bombardment of the city of Al Zawiya committed during the war in this country between 2019 and 2020.
The EU based its sanctions on the fact that the group had recruited, trained and dispatched private military operatives to conflict zones around the world to fuel violence, loot natural resources and intimidating civilians in violation of international law, including international human rights law.”
In November 2022, the group’s owner opened its first headquarters in a glass building in St. Petersburg, coinciding with his claims that had interfered in the past in foreign democratic processes especially in the United States, while informing that it would continue to do so.
In fact, the US sanctioned Prigozhin for his role in the campaign of interference and disinformation, especially against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, which was won by Republican Donald Trump.
On December 2, 2022, a journalistic investigation carried out by the European Research Collaborations (EIC) consortium revealed that the Wagner army markets “blood diamonds” worldwide through a company in the Central African Republic, including Europe.
