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The Wagner Group is a collection of private military companies working in conjunction
with a headquarters element.
The group operated in the shadows for many years handling paramilitary duties on behalf
of Vladimir Putin and augmenting Russian forces.
On June 24, 2023 General Prigozhin the head of the 25,000 strong Wagner mercenary group
withdrew from operations in the Ukraine and demanded the resignation of the country's
top defense officials over alleged failures in the war in Ukraine.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters had led a force march for justice that saw them travel
from the southern city Rostov on Don to the outskirts of Moscow before it would end.
Who is General Yevgeny Prigozhin?What is the history of the Wagner Group?
Why would they fight for and then turn on Putin?
Hello I'm Colin Heaton a veteran of the United States Army and Marine Corps former history
professor book author and welcome to this episode of Forgotten history [Music]
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General Yevgeny Prigozhin was born June 1st 1961 in Saint Petersburg Russia.
He was arrested in 1978 for robbery and again in 1981 for choking a woman while his friends
stole her jewelry.
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
After his release from prison in 1991 he entered the food sales and restaurant business where
he started Concord Catering becoming friends with Vladimir Putin.
He received the contract to supply food to the Russian military.
This was when he started the Wagner Group with its co-founders.
The Wagner Group got its name from its primary founder Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin, a former
officer in Russia's Military Intelligence Agency the GRU.
Utkin's covert call sign was "Wagner" with some saying that it alluded to his pro-Nazi
ideology and used the name of Adolf Hitler's favorite composer Richard Wagner.
He was a lieutenant colonel and brigade commander of a unit of Spetsnaz GRU the 700th Independent
Spetsnaz detachment of the 2nd Independent Brigade and he retired from the Russian Security
Services in 2013.
In 2013 Utkin began working for the Moran Security Group a private company founded by
Russian military veterans and were involved in security and training missions worldwide
specializing in security against piracy at sea.
The actual command structure placed former operatives Igor Kostyukov and former head
of Russian SSO Aleksey Dyumin in overall command with Yevgeny Prigozhin primarily handling
recruitment and training until the invasion of Ukraine.
This group also served to protect the oil fields in Syria and after that ended he started
the Wagner Group in 2014 and remained as a senior military command adviser.
The Wagner Group is very diversified through various other shadow corporations such as
Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering to assist in hiding their activities.
The group trains their personnel at a Russian MOD facility, Molkino, Krasnodar Krai which
is labeled as a children's camp and active duty Russian military personnel conduct the
training for all new hires and most of his longtime soldiers had served in Syria many
surviving the Tomahawk cruise missile attack launched by President Donald Trump in 2018
following a firefight between U.S military and Wagner Group personnel in Syria.
Many experts believe that the Wagner Group is in effect just an extension of the Russian
military as they share bases as well as ground and air transport and logistics support and
the Russian government handles their new passports and pays them directly.
The Wagner Group has also been compared with Academi the American security firm formerly
known as Blackwater.
This is where the relationship enters a murky area as Russian law explicitly prohibits "...illegal
armed formations and mercenary groups" but at the same time the Russian state does not
prosecute numerous PMCs employing Russians and operating in Russia.
The Wagner code of honor lists their so-called Ten Commandments such as "...to protect the
interests of Russia always and everywhere, to value the honor of a Russian soldier, to
not fight for money but from the principle of winning always and everywhere."
The Wagner Group has operated in the Middle East South America and Africa most notably
in Syria and more recently in Ukraine.
Their role under Putin was different from western nations using security contractors
which augment and support military forces as a method of force multiplication.
Wagner's African Branch was under the command of Colonel Konstantin Aleksandrovich Pikalov.
They specialized in being hired to train the militaries of third world dictatorships to
keep their respective despots in power as well as providing personal security for the
leaders and their entourage.
The soldiers deployed by Prigozhin and Pikalov received payments including securing deals
for natural resources such as billions of dollars worth of gold and large profits from
lumber operations from the Central African Republic, diamonds from the Ivory Coast and
other high-grade oars and minerals across north and central Africa.
Additionally the Wagner group recruited imprisoned UPC rebels in the Central African Republic
to serve and fight in Mali and Ukraine and they are nicknamed the "Black Russians".
Other missions sent the group to Sudan, Mali, Mozambique, Chad, Madagascar, Lesotho, Libya,
and Botswana, Zimbabwe, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau
just to name a few.
Putin had stated on February 8, 2022 that "the Russian state is not involved and has
nothing to do with Wagner's activities in Africa," although the several tons of gold
were flown into Moscow under military supervision.
After Utkin disappeared, some say killed others say he simply went underground, Pikalov took
over primary operations.
He served as a military officer in Russia's experimental military unit numbered 99795
located in the village of Storozhevo near Saint Petersburg.
This interesting unit was tasked in part with determining the effects of radioactive rays
on living organisms.
Following his retirement in 2012 he starred a private detective agency.
After years of denying his attachment to the group Prigozhin claimed, "I cleaned the old
weapons myself sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could
help me with this.
From that moment on May 1,2014 a group of patriots was born which later came to be called
the Wagner Battalion."
In an interview in December 2018 Russian President Putin said in regard to Wagner PMCs operating
in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that "everyone should remain within the legal framework and
as if the Wagner group was violating the law the Russian prosecutor General's office should
provide a legal assessment."
But according to Putin if they did not violate Russian law they had the right to work and
promote their business interest abroad and he denied allegations the Yevgeny Prigozhin
controlled their group and actions which have been proven false.
Ironically Prigozhin is also wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for conspiracy
to defraud the United States and is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading
to Prigozhin's arrest.
He is wanted for allegedly overseeing the political and electoral interference of the
Saint Petersburg, Florida-based Internet Research Agency from 2014 to 2018.
The claim is that the agency of which Prigozhin was the primary funder, worked to interfere
with the 2016 U.S presidential election.
The Wagner Group was used by Putin to handle covert military activities with a plausible
deniability factor, therefore not directly involving Russian forces to expand his reach
and influence.
The group is quite eclectic with an international cadre from nations that made up the old Soviet
Union including many Ukrainians.
The Wagner Group assisted in the 2014 incursion into the Crimea taking that territory from
Ukraine in violation of international law as well as the actions in Chechnya and Georgia
before that.
They have been accused of atrocities including mass murder and rape across Africa and alongside
Russian forces in Ukraine which Prigozhin has denied.
In fact he actually insinuated that any crimes committed were done so by the Russian Army.
Prigozhin flew in more than 400 men from the Central African Republic in mid to late January
2022 on a mission to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy and the members
of his government.
Zelenskyy survived three direct assassination attempts two of which were allegedly orchestrated
by the Wagner Group.
In 2022 Prigozhin had permission to recruit members from Russian prisons and gulags hiring
often very violent criminals focusing upon those with prior military experience.
The inmates were offered one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand rubles and amnesty
for six months of voluntary service or 5 million rubles to their relatives if they died.
On January 5th 2023 the first in group of 24 prisoners recruited by Wagner to fight
in Ukraine finished their six-month contracts and were released with full amnesty for their
past crimes.
Wagner mercenaries were an integral part in the battles of Popasna, Lysychansk and Sievierodonetak
and capturing Svitlodarsk along with the Russian Army when the atrocities were reported.
But Prigozhin became discontented and he has claimed that Russian commanders intentionally
withheld their forces in supporting Wagner Group's mercenaries in some of the heaviest
fighting and for various reasons.
He also supported the claims by Ukrainian soldiers and former convict prisons of war
who stated that in Bakhmut they were used as bait as they were poorly armed and sent
in human wave attacks to draw out and expose Ukrainian positions to be attacked by more
experienced Russian infantry units or artillery and airstrikes.
One group involved was Task Force Rusich founded by Alexey Milchakov and Jan Petrovsky in the
summer of 2014 which is a far-right extremist sabotage and assault reconnaissance unit which
has been fighting as part of the Russian separatists forces in eastern Ukraine.
Their logo features a Slavic-styled swastika they have also been accused of major war crimes.
Another group are called "Arkan's Tigers" under the commander Davor Savicic a Bosnian
Serb a veteran of the Kosovo war and Syria as of 2016.
He was reportedly removed from command after being attacked in Luhansk and suffering shell
shock.
Others included Norwegian and Swedish volunteers called the "Nidhogg" correlating to the dragon
in Norse mythology.
In January 2023 Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic criticized Wagner for recruiting Serbian
nationals and called on Russia to put an end to the practice noting that it is a violation
under Serbian law for citizens to take part in foreign armed conflicts or serve in foreign
militaries.
In January 2023 the Wagner Group captured the salt mine town of Soledar.
After heavy fighting during the battle Wagner reportedly surrounded Ukrainian troops in
the center of the town.
Hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian troops were killed in the battle for Soledar.
Several days later Wegner captured Klishchiivka south of Bakhmut and Wagner casualties in
the Invasion number thirty thousand wounded with as many as nine thousand killed.
They did send in replacements.
The U.S estimates that half those deaths occurred since the middle of December 2022 with 90
percent of Wagner Fighters being ill-trained and ill-equipped convicts.
Concurrently the UK Ministry of Defence estimated that convicts recruited by Wagner had experienced
a casualty rate of up to 50 percent.
Most of these casualties occurred when Russian air and ground assets were not provided as
support, hence Prigozhin's consternation.
On May 5th 2023 Yevgeny Prigozhin blamed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of
the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov for the tens of thousands of Wagner casualties
saying, "they came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in
your luxury offices."
On June 23, 2023 Prigozhin stated that Russian justifications for the invasion of Ukraine
were based on lies and he accused the Russian defense ministry under Shoigu of "trying to
deceive the society and the president and tell us how there was a crazy aggression from
Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO."
Another claim is that the group is not being paid according to the contractual agreements
and that Russian units not actively involved in the fighting were getting priority on food
and ammunition resupply operations.
However Putin released a statement on June 27, 2023 that the group had been paid one
billion dollars over the previous year that included future payments for their services.
Prigozhin also claimed that Russian on-call air support was rarely available when he needed
it, same with artillery and that when they did arrive on several occasions they struck
his units killing his men.
Another claim by Prigozhin and probably true was that Russian military forces had been
committing the atrocities and laying the blame on the Wagner Group to deflect any responsibility.
Eyewitnesses in Ukraine tend to support this assertion although Wagner has been accused
of such crimes by the Ukrainians.
Prigozhin was apparently upset with the blame being placed on his units.
The lack of support by Russian forces creating the heavy casualties created the desertions
and surrenders of Wagner soldiers.
Prigozhin's Wagner forces left Ukraine and marched into Russia seizing control of the
Russian military headquarters for the southern region in Rostov on Don which oversees the
fighting in Ukraine.
On June 23rd the group was driving towards Moscow but the mutiny was halted the next
day June 24th when the deal was brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
and on that day a statement came that Yevgeny Prigozhin was accused by the Russian government
of organizing an armed uprising after he threatened to attack Russian forces in response to a
claimed airstrike on his paramilitary soldiers.
Prigozhin believed that the airstrike on his troops was Putin's attempt to 1- not have
to pay them their money 2- blame dead men on the atrocities committed by Russian soldiers
3- possibly use the airstrikes as a way of working out a cease bar with Ukraine by taking
credit for stopping the mass murders in a false lag operation and 4- since Wagner is
a designated terrorist organization by the U.S., UK, EU and U.N it allowed his commanders
to give some distance from their reported actions.
The reports are that many Wagner Group soldiers have deserted and joined Ukrainian forces
or fled the country not trusting the Russians.
It has been reported that these defectors gave the locations of mass murder and burial
sites naming the Russian commanders responsible for war crimes.
In response the Russian Security Forces accused Prigozhin of launching a military coup attempt
as he pledged a March of Justice against the Russian Army in retaliation.
As a result Putin was forced to admit that he hired Wagner meaning that whether or not
Wagner committed war crimes they are now responsible due to the connection.
Putin's response to the revolt was, "All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable
punishment.
The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders."
Prigozhin and his convoy were well received by both Ukrainians and Russians as they advanced
towards Moscow troubling Putin who realized that he had a challenge to his authority.
But why would Prigozhin risk such a bold move?
One may assume that he would only have taken such a chance if he believed that he had high
level support from Russian military leaders who would be glad to get rid of Putin.
Either that or he believed that the soldiers would mutiny against their commanders and
join the coup.
As a way of saving face and defusing the situation Putin offered to forgive treason charges against
Prigoxhin giving him immunity which otherwise would mean a death penalty.
Yet Putin never said that he would not pursue him on other charges such as extortion, theft,
tax evasion and corruption.
Prigozhin fled to Belarus when that country's president offered him asylum but he must know
that he is still not safe there since they have an extradition treaty with Russia and
Lukashenko is friends with Putin.
There are rumors that he may try and come to the United States despite the many charges
he would face.
The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia.
He may feel that surrendering to U.S authorities and making a deal is better than the alternative.
Prigozhin would be a prime witness against Putin and his field commanders who are charged
with war crimes themselves.
Who knows?
Time will tell.
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