Wagner Group, Putin’s Nazi private army, threatens Russian national security

Last weekend the government of Vladmir Putin suffered from a serious threat to national security when a group of private mercenaries, the Wagner Group, an armed band of mercenaries, tried to put down a rebellion against the Russian state. About forty thousand mercenaries are commanded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group and hitherto faithful squire of the Russian president. They are people of different ethnicities hired to fight in wars anywhere in the world, however, the association has other activities.

It was in the year of 2014 that the group was formed in the city of Krasnodar, west of Moscow, next to a Russian army intelligence base. The group’s philosophy is based on ideas from the Nazism, ideology that emerged with that name in Germany in the year 1920 that defended the supremacy of the white Aryan ethnic group over the others.

the founders

One of Wagner’s founding leaders is dmtri utkin, a former Russian intelligence soldier who has strong connections, through tattoos, with Nazism. Dmtri and Prigozhin are then the founders of the group.

Prigozhin has a decades-long history with Vladimir Putin. From a poor family, in his adolescence he lived off petty crimes, until he was once arrested and spent ten years in prison, in the 1980s. Soviet Union it was collapsing. He needed to earn money and started selling hot dogs on the street until he managed to open his restaurant.

The food was so good that it reached the then mayor of the city where the restaurant was located, in the city of St. Petersburg. The mayor in question was Vladimir Putin. When the latter becomes president in 1999, he hires Prigozhin to be his government’s cook, grants him various perks and his company begins to be the official supplier of warm for schools and prisons across the Russian Federation. He becomes a millionaire and the president’s right-hand man.

The beginning

The first mission of the Wagner Group was when Russia annexed the Crimea region, a territory that belonged to Ukraine, in 2014. And to legitimize its incorporation, they hired the rebel group to pass themselves off as Ukrainians and thus appear as spontaneous an alleged public support for this invasion.

In the year 2015, another important mission was given to the mercenaries. In the Syrian War, they were hired by the dictator Bashar Al-Assad to support his government and fight rebel groups against his government, under payment of 25% of Syrian oil production. In all, there were over fifteen hundred contract soldiers.

group fortune

The group’s founders don’t just profit from their mercenary soldiers’ contracts. There are indications from the FBI that the group is involved in millionaire ventures, such as hotels, mining, civil construction and other services.

In Africa, agreements with dictators’ governments are also closed with large percentages, and large mines for extracting minerals, especially diamonds.

The group is also accused of interfering in some elections, as in the case of the election of donald trump in the United States and in the vote of the Brexit, which defined the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Both Trump and the then UK government were conservative at the time, as well as the group’s ideals.

Current formation of mercenaries

After Russia’s declaration of war against Ukraine, Prigozhin began recruiting prisoners in Russian prisons and people from other regions of the world interested in fighting in the war. In return, he offered training and pay for missions.

The group is accused of using extreme violence on the battlefields, committing various crimes, such as gang rape, torture and various other atrocities. Using cruelty is one of the mottos of mercenaries.

Prigozhin gains notoriety when, unlike Russian commanders, whether defense ministers or President Putin himself, he appears on the battlefronts, alongside his military battalion and that of Russia’s official army. This creates discomfort, as officially he is not currently part of the government.

With that, this last weekend, after a lack of agreement with the Russian government, such as not supplying more ammunition and equipment, they tried an insurrection, co-opting members of the official Russian army. But an agreement with Vladimir Putin, the attempt was frustrated, Prigozhin wins amnesty as well as everyone who participated in the attempt.

The Wagner Group currently operates in the war in Ukraine and Africa.

Featured Photo: mercenary of the Wagner group. Reproduction/Reuters/rights reserved