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Its officers serving in Syria are reported to earn up to 300,000 roubles (3,800; $5,300) a month. "Fontanka" named the name of another alleged participant in the brutal execution in Syria Ok-Manner1919 1 yr. ago This is a great video for those who don't want to see the gore but wanna know what the video looks like. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. This style of hybrid warfare has become a cornerstone of Russias efforts to project its interests abroad. He has been referred to as Putins chef because of his catering business, which has staged elaborate state banquets for Mr. Putin. Vagner's operations have always been shrouded in secrecy, but its role in Syria came into the spotlight in February 2018 when U.S. military commanders launched a massive ground and air assault against a column of fighters and weaponry in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor. After more than a year of government stonewalling and dodging allegations about the case, advocates for the victim say, Russian authorities will now be forced to go on record no matter what. "The Wagner Group's activities are a threat for the people in the countries where they operate and the European Union,"EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said. The video, which appears to have been taken in 2017, showed several men in military-style clothing beating a prisoner with a sledgehammer, then beheading him, amputating his arms with a sappers trowel and setting his body on fire using gasoline or another accelerant. The men, who appear to be drunk in the video, sought to hide their identities by covering their faces. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Want to read more on this topic or region? Unconfirmed reports said Nuzhin had been part of a recent Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange, news that has led to concerns among human rights groups. The European Union on Saturday announced additional sanctions against Russia's Wagner Group mercenary and economic organization for The newspaper has not released the mans full last name in order to protect his family from potential reprisals. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Afterwards, the men posed for a photograph with the suspended body, across the torso of which they wrote: For the VDV [Russian airborne forces] and an out-of-focus word that appears to say razvedka, a term for military intelligence. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on Three Wagner Group mercenaries are alleged by Ukrainian prosecutors to have killed and tortured civilians near Kyiv in April 2022, alongside regular Russian troops. There are many questions and I hope we get to the bottom of this, Vladimir Osechkin, the head of Gulagu.net, a rights group focusing on alleged abuses in the Russian prison system, told the Guardian. The Wagner Group is a very convenient fiction for a lot of people in Russia who both want to get rich and project power abroad, Rondeaux said. The newspaper also offered to hand over materials acquired to Russian law enforcement. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said he had not had time to watch the video. Allegations of the Wagner Groups involvement in the torture and murder of al-Abdullah, who is better known by his nicknames, Hamdi or Hamadi Bouta, first emerged in June 2017 when a two-minute long video clip of the killing surfaced in an anonymous post on a Reddit subchannel popular with military geeks. The fighters were reportedly wounded in a United States airstrike near the city. After working for a time in Lebanon, Bouta decided to return to his family in Deir Ezzor. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. 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. When the civil war began, he traveled to Lebanon to find construction work after the situation in Syria deteriorated and large parts of Deir Ezzor came under ISIS control, according to an account of Boutas final days given to lawyers by his family. In a phone interview with The Daily Beast on Saturday, Darwish said that the case against the six Wagner Group paramilitaries is being lodged under articles in the Russian criminal code that call for the prosecution of anyone implicated in torture, grievous bodily injury, and murder. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Pretoria on Monday for talks with one of Moscow's most important allies in Africa. Before setting it alight and watching it burn as they pose for the camera, they scrawl a Russian phrase praising the country's airborne forces on its chest. Initially, Russian officials said only four Russian citizens but perhaps dozens more were killed; a Syrian officer said around 100 Syrian soldiers had died. The Conoco outpost was hit with a mixture of tank fire, large artillery and mortar rounds, the documents show. Theyre testing us every day., How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and U.S. .. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian revolution last year, a complaint against the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner was filed in A video of a second apparent execution using a sledgehammer was posted by a Wagner-linked blogger on Monday. Putins Russian Critics AreGrowingEver Louder, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart, The State Departments Lack of Diversity Is Bad for U.S. Anyone can read what you share. But the Russian government has preferred to keep Wagners actions obscured, even hiding preparations for funerals when members of the private military company have been killed abroad. are assisting Somali soldiers fighting Al Shabab, and by a health care system that utterly failed him, The case has irritated U.S. relations with a crucial military ally, four Russian citizens but perhaps dozens more. Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed consciously, he said. What government officials are saying in public, and private, is fascinatingand full of contradictions. The entity first emerged in 2014, during Russias annexation of Crimea. But as well as disputing Wagner's presence, Russia said it would "actively participate in collective efforts to stabilize the situation" and "develop a multifaceted cooperation with Burkina Faso," including potentially training the country's military. up as tough on Beijing, even seeking to contain the rise of the worlds second-biggest economy. The open source investigation team Bellingcat also said it had identified the same person. You may opt out at any time. 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 Russian-speaking man who filmed the torture and killing of a prisoner in Syria has been identified as a member of Wagner, a Russian private military company At worst, officials and experts have said, it could plunge both countries into bloody conflict. What will another year of war look like? And how might that be impacting the world? Syrias government controls oil, gas, and mineral production and export, and Syrias General Petroleum Company sets strategy for exploration and development and supervises national subsidiaries, including the Syrian Petroleum Company (SPC) and Syrian Gas Company (SGC). The newspaper ties the men to Vagner, a shadowy Russian mercenary group widely believed to be spearheading the expansion of Russian influence across Africa and the Middle East. The European Unionon Saturday announced additional sanctions against Russia's Wagner Group mercenary and economic organization for "human rights abuses" committed in the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and Ukraine. Diplomacy, To Save France, Macron Is Dividing Europe, The United States Has Never Recovered From the Falklands War. They are the Swiss Army knives of modern Russian warfare and serve as force multipliers, arms merchants, trainers of local military and security personnel, and political consultants, according to a recent. Delivered Friday. Saturday's additional sanctions were decided "in view of the international dimension and gravity of the group's activities, as well as its destabilizing impact on the countries where it is active,"said a statement from the European Council. Prigozhin, who is under western sanctions for his role in Wagner, on Sunday voiced his approval for the killing, calling Nuzhin a traitor. It sheds new light on the networks operations and reveals how the killing became a rallying point for Russian ultranationalists online. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In leaked documents, he wrote that he joined Wagner in 2016 to protect the interests of the Russian Federation abroad. 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. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told Congress that a "a couple hundred Russians" were killed in the attack. "I'm convinced this has nothing to do with the Russian military operation in Syria," Peskov told reporters. Four days before the newspaper report, the Syrian news site Jesr Press published what it claimed was the victim's name: a 33-year-old from Deir al-Zor who had left the country when civil war broke out but reportedly returned in 2017 to join government forces propping up the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Mali's ruling junta last year forced French troops out of the country soon after committing a coup and welcomed in Wagner forces. The documents reveal that the company. Subscribers can send in questions in advance. NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Russian Paramilitaries Accused of Torture and Beheading in Landmark Legal Case Against Wagner Group IN THE DOCK The Kremlin-backed Wagner Group will be A few of the commandos, including Air Force combat controllers, worked the radios to direct the next fleet of bombers flying toward the battlefield. Wagner's presence in CAR soon led to the departure of a French-led international peacekeeping force in the country, as was the case even more abruptly last year in Mali. Russia. But Russian military officials said they had no control over the fighters assembling near the river even though American surveillance equipment monitoring radio transmissions had revealed the ground force was speaking in Russian. The Defense Ministry denied any Russian uniformed personnel were killed. The shaky cell phone footage taken at al-Shaer gas plant near Palmyra, Syria, shows a Syrian man, who was known to friends and family as Hamdi Bouta, lying on the ground, surrounded by Russian-speaking men in military fatigues. Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) serves food to Vladimir Putin in 2011. They beat his extremities with a sledgehammer before decapitating him, setting his body on fire and posing for photographs with his remains. The newspaper identifies the man by his first name and the first letter of his surname but withholds his full name amid concerns for his family's safety. Lawyers and human rights advocates involved in the Moscow case say the complaint marks an important first step toward bringing Russian mercenaries affiliated with the Wagner Group to account for a host of war crimes committed not only in Syria but Libya and the Central African Republic, where several related firms linked to a well-connected Kremlin insider and a one-time Russian intelligence official have reportedly been operating since at least 2017. A CAR radio station,Lengo Sengo, was also sanctioned on charges of spreading disinformation on Wagner's behalf. [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 Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. "In exchange for access to natural resources principally diamonds and gold Wagner has provided President Faustin Archange-Touadera with military and political support, which has proven pivotal in sustaining his embattled presidency against an onslaught of rebel groups. Twitter:@ak_mack, NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: The documents described the fighters as a pro-regime force, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. WebIts also the call sign of the groups unconfirmed leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence lieutenant, Wagner fan and suspected neo-Nazi. American warplanes arrived in waves, including Reaper drones, F-22 stealth fighter jets, F-15E Strike Fighters, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships and AH-64 Apache helicopters. 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. Expanding Influence Russian corporate records and customs documents reviewed by C4ADS as well as EvroPolis company records provided by the London-based Dossier Center show that the company was offered a 25 percent share of the revenues of Syrian oil and gas fields it was able to seize from the Islamic State. What is the Wagner Group? Neither Timchenko nor Prigozhin are expressly named in connection with Boutas killing. Wagner would have not been able to commit this medieval execution without the approval of the Russian security services, Osechkin said. A half-hour later, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces struck. 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. By then, some of the American warplanes had returned to base, low on either fuel or ammunition. 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. 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. EvroPolis was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 for being owned or controlled by Prigozhin. There is now little doubt that Putin failed in his initial goals: Kyiv is still Show morestanding, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. This has absolutely no relation to Russian soldiers, no matter what is being published about it, said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin. Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law. As the Green Berets and Marines neared the Conoco plant around 11:30 p.m., they were forced to stop. Journalists, open-source researchers, and other observers have tracked Russian military companies to operations in the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Libya. Footage of the summary killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin was posted over the weekend by the Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone. Evening roundup with our editors favorite stories of the day. The group is not registered as a legal entity anywhere in the world. Apostols family have reportedly confirmed that he worked as a private security contractor in Syria, and that he was one of several hundred Russians killed in a U.S. airstrike in the northeastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. 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