Ukraine said that it successfully struck the headquarters of the Wagner Group
in the Luhansk region.
The mercenary group has been taking an active part in the conflict on behalf of the Kremlin.
The hit comes just days after photos posted online mistakenly revealed the location.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, said the base was “destroyed
by a precision strike” after its whereabouts were established “thanks to a Russian journalist”.
Pro-Kremlin war reports also acknowledged the attack.
Some revelations suggest Russia deployed the group to Ukraine in late March.
In this video, Defense Updates analyzes how social media posts enabled Ukraine
to hit Russia's Wagner Group headquarter? Let's get into the details.
Wagner group was reportedly founded by Dmitry Utkin,
a former special forces colonel and veteran of the two wars in Chechnya.
Wagner group has been linked by western intelligence agencies
to the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is a close associate of Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s cook” because his restaurants and catering companies
have hosted lavish dinner parties for the president’s inner circle, is thought to own it.
He was reported to have been at the base days before the Ukrainian strike.
The presence of Wagner paramilitaries has been documented in Libya,
Mali and Syria as well as Africa. Members of the group have repeatedly tried
to assassinate Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky, according to multiple sources.
As per a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
a Washington-based think tank, “The Russian government has found
Wagner and other private military companies to be useful as a way to extend its influence overseas
without the visibility and intrusiveness of state military forces”
Ukraine was able to locate the headquarters after a Russian propagandist, Sergei Sreda,
accidentally revealed its location in photos posted to Telegram on Aug. 8
The video showed a street sign with the address of a nearby bomb shelter,
which allowed Kyiv to figure out the location.
According to unconfirmed reports, HIMARS or
High Mobility Artillery Rocket System supplied by the US has been used for this strike.
HIMARS has one universal pod that can accommodate 6 unguided/guided missiles of 227 mm caliber
or one MGM-140 ATACMS, mounted on a standard M1140 truck frame.
With the extended range guided rocket GMLRS or Guided MLRS which have been provided to Ukraine,
HIMARS can reach a land target at a maximum range of 46 miles or 75 km
and have a reliability rating exceeding 98 % for a CEP of 10 m.
As per some estimates, around 100 fighters were killed.
The Wagner Group has been used to do the Kremlin's dirty jobs. It has a notorious reputation.
It is speculated that the Wagner Group is used by the Russian government to allow for plausible
deniability in certain conflicts and to obscure the number of casualties and financial costs
of Russia's foreign interventions from the public
Because it often operates in support of Russian interests or foreign policy objectives and is
reportedly trained on installations of the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD), several sources
consider the group an arm's-length unit of the MoD or Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.
The strike showcases the perils of Social Media posts in the war zone,
it is very important to sanitize them very carefully before posting.
Ukrainian intelligence has been good when it comes to the identification of
key Russian assets, as already seen when Russian ammunition dumps were targeted.
This strike again validates their agility and prowess
Another aspect is that with HIMARS in Ukrainian hands,
Russia has very little margin for error on the battlefield.