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The secrecy around Wagner (click here) makes it difficult to determine who its members are, their total number, and their capabilities. Press reports indicate that most of its 3,600 to 5,000 fighters are Russian citizens (mostly ethnic Russians and Cossacks), but the group also includes Ukrainians and some citizens of other countries.4 Informal and online networks of veterans and other groups help recruit candidates. Prospective fighters go to Wagner’s base in southern Russia for evaluation, and if accepted, they pledge to maintain secrecy and sign short-term renewable contracts of three to six months. The fighters vary in age (from early twenties to mid-fifties), and some have impressive military backgrounds while others are much less experienced. Nevertheless, training appears to be limited.
There is no single motivation to join. High salaries are a major attraction, given combat pay is several times higher than the average Russian wage. Fighters quoted in the press also espouse patriotism and service to Russia. Some adhere to Russian nationalism, but no clear ideological dogma drives the group as a whole.
2018. It seems like yesterday. Let's see Crimean occupation began March of 2014. There were unmarked uniformed soldiers that landed in the airport and transported Yanukovych and his family to Russia. That was most likely the Wagner Group. But, I seriously thought the 200 reported dead were them, now they are again in Ukraine. That is not possible. They might be working under the same name of "Wagner Group," but, they are known to have died in Syria.
February 13, 2018The Syrian proxy war is heating up, especially between the US and Russia. (click here)
On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that US and Kurdish forces in Syria had killed 200 fighters last week, including many Russian contract soldiers, according to several Russian sources and an American official.
The Russians, who were fighting on the side of embattled Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, attacked a military base in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria on February 7, according to the Bloomberg report. US forces stationed with Syrian Democratic forces troops on the base responded with artillery fire and air strikes.
Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesperson for United States Central Command, confirmed in an email that that there was a raid conducted by pro-Assad forces, but would not confirm that any Russian fighters had been killed. US coalition forces were in “regular communication with Russian counterparts before, during and after the thwarted, unprovoked attack,” he wrote. “Russian officials assured Coalition officials they would not engage Coalition forces in the vicinity.”...
Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, dismissed during an interview with VOA last year any notion the mercenaries are Kremlin-linked or directed, saying there’s little Russia can legally do to prevent “private Russian citizens from acting as bodyguards overseas.”
Gabidullin told Meduza he wrote the book in part to push the Kremlin into acknowledging the group’s existence, as well as the deaths of its fighters, who receive neither military funerals nor posthumous medals. Around 300 Wagner fighters are believed to have been killed or wounded in a firefight with U.S.-led Kurdish forces in Syria in February 2018.
“There is a complete deception on the part of the military and politicians surrounding the topic of private military contractors,” he said. “The whole world knows but you are hiding the truth from your own people. Is this normal?”
In 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Wagner Group for supporting pro-Moscow separatists in the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region....
By Phillip Obaji, Jr.
Ebam, Cameroon - At first Florencia Pirioua (click here) thought the Russian mercenaries she saw approaching her compound in Boko-Boudeye, just outside the western Central African Republic (CAR) town of Bouar, were in the community in search of rebels who had consistently targeted the area in the first four months of the year. But she says these paramilitaries from the infamous Wagner Group had an ulterior motive—to snatch children from their families.
Pirioua—a 33-year-old mother of two kids—said “six well-armed white soldiers” forced their way into her single-room home at the start of May and took away her 13-year-old son, leaving her 10-year-old daughter behind. She said the Russians then went from house to house seizing little boys and beating up family members who tried to stop them.
“If you don’t let go, they’ll break your hands,” said Pirioua, who had a bandage tied round her left elbow after it was hit with a gun by a Wagner fighter. She was talking to The Daily Beast in the southwest Cameroonian town of Ebam, where she now lives. “At first they said he was not my child and that I stole him. Later they said they were taking him away for my own good.”
Christelle Youmbi says the Russians seized her only child while the 11-year-old was taking a bath just behind where they live in the same compound in Boko-Boudeye. She said a Wagner soldier hit her son in the head with a gun and carried him away “completely naked.”...
