Now it wants an end to sanctions. A billboard in Bangui with the slogan "The Central African Republic is hand in hand with Russia" (file photo), published what it claimed was the victim's name. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. International Federation for Human Rights. The Novaya Gazeta report added more clarity to an incident that prompted anger and confusion when evidence of it first surfaced. Theywere Wagner commanders said to be linked to Russia's capture of the town of Soledar in Ukraine in January. It operates in a situation of opacity, theres a real lack of transparency and thats the whole point, said Sorcha MacLeod, chair of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, which has scrutinized the group. Mercenary activity that enables and secures these business interests has become the most visible manifestation of these networks. In total the bloc targeted 11 individuals and seven entities it said was linked to the once-secretive private military and economic arm of Russian foreign policy controlled by a historically close ally of Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Media and think tank reports indicate that natural gas extraction by EvroPolis, a firm Prigozhin holds a stake in according to U.S. authorities, generated about $162 million from al-Shaer and several other nearby gas fields in 2017, the same year Bouta was killed. Hes a graduate of Harvards Davis Center and a recipient of New York University's Reporting Award and the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Journalism Award. Wagner's fighters appeared in Libya in April 2019 when they joined the forces of a rebel general, Khalifa Haftar, after he launched an attack on the UN-backed EvroPolis really, perhaps more than any other single entirety in the Prigozhin-associated network, captures the full suite of services that the Prigozhin networks have access to, said Margolin. 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. It was dark, according to the documents, and the roads were littered with felled power lines and shell craters. As the Green Berets and Marines neared the Conoco plant around 11:30 p.m., they were forced to stop. Ilya Novikov, one of the Russian attorneys who filed the ground-breaking legal complaint, said in a written statement that he and his co-counsel Petr Zaikin, decided to initiate the case after a demand for Russias Investigative Committee, the countrys top prosecutorial body, apparently fell flat. Your guide to the most important world stories of the day. Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told Congress that a "a couple hundred Russians" were killed in the attack. What is the Wagner Group? One allied Syrian fighter was wounded. 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. At the outpost, American soldiers watched a column of tanks and other armored vehicles turn and drive toward them around 10 p.m., emerging from a neighborhood of houses where they had tried to gather undetected. Our whole family was in tears watching the video he was murdered like an animal, Nuzhin said. Boutas slaying is symptomatic of the accountability vacuum in which the Wagner Group operates. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. 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. Delivered Wednesday. environment on the planet from our adversaries, Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of United States Special Operations Command, said recently, referring to electronic warfare. The U.S. government has said that the organization is financed by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and a close associate of Mr. Putin. A BBC Russian investigation in 2018 highlighted the deaths of Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria. Indeed, this is a repeat of what happened 20 years ago, when enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions committed during the armed conflict in the Northern Caucasus were likewise not investigated.. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. The legal case in Moscow turns on four separate video clips depicting several Russian-speaking men beating, decapitating, and burning a badly mutilated man at the al-Shaer gas plant, a central node in a multimillion-dollar joint oil and gas deal forged between the Syrian government owned General Petroleum Corporation and Stroytransgaz, a Russian state-run hydrocarbon engineering firm headed by Gennady Timchenko, a longtime Putin associate. The GRU often directs and supports the group in combat, and the available evidence indicates close coordination in Were going to Moscow, to their territory, to their courts, and to their jurisdiction, Darwish said. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States Central Command has refined the amount of equipment, logistics, coordination and tactics required to mix weapons fired from both the air and ground. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Explore the benefits included in your subscription. Contacted by Novaya Gazeta, relatives and friends of the Russian man, named as Stanislav D., either did not respond or denied any affiliation with him. The Guardian checked the results independently using the facial recognition software FindClone and found the same results. In an interview with the Russian human rights group Gulagu.net late on Sunday, Ilya Nuzhin said his family learned of their fathers death through Telegram, which left them horrified. The group is not registered as a legal entity anywhere in the world. Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. Syrian authorities arrested Bouta as he crossed the border and turned him over to members of the Syrian military. The company is widely believed to be controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a longtime associate of Vladimir Putin who once served as the Russian president's chef. But researchers from groups such as Bellingcat and the Conflict Intelligence Team, as well as Russian journalists most notably from Novaya Gazeta and Fontanka, have been able to use fragments of publicly available information to build a clearer picture of who is fighting for Russias private military contractors abroad. He has previously denied any links to the group, though various investigations have linked him to its activities. 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 with ties to the Kremlin that has aggressively expanded into the Middle East and Africa in recent years. It was unclear, however, whether that case would move forward after federal prosecutors working under the Trump administration dropped charges against Prigozhins St. Petersburg-based firm Concord Consulting and Management in connection with the case. The most pointed criticisms of the war are coming from those charged with fighting it. $162 million from oil and gas fields in central Syria in 2017 alone. 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. 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. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. The Paris-based Syrian investigative news site Jesr Press was able to piece together the most detailed account of Boutas life and how he came to be captured by Russian mercenaries. At one point in the video, a second severed head can be seen lying on the ground. In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. While it is not clear whether U.S authorities would pursue further sanctions against Prigozhin, Timchenko, or any of the other entities implicated in reporting and legal filings on Boutas case the facts certainly suggest that American investigators in Washington will be tracking its outcome closely. In April, the French army released imagery from drone cameras that showed Wagner Group soldiers laying out dead bodies in the sand near a French army base in Mali after the French withdrew. What government officials are saying in public, and private, is fascinatingand full of contradictions. Some of the fighters appeared to have been recruited from Syria and Libya, the Pentagons spokesman, John F. Kirby, has said. Snippets of the video had been posted online since 2017 but the full footage was uploaded last week to a closed VKontakte group for members of Wagner. 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. 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. New Report Exposes Brutal Methods of Russias Wagner Group, Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by, The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were, Close to Russian government but nominally independent, private military contractors give the Kremlin a degree of plausible deniability and have complicated efforts by Western policymakers to formulate a response. Companies linked to the Wagner group are snapping up oil and gas leaseswith an eye to pumping influence, not oil. The Defense Ministry denied any Russian uniformed personnel were killed. Russian authorities ignored requests by the media and rights activists to investigate the killing. The details of the Feb. 7 firefight were gleaned from interviews and documents newly obtained by The New York Times. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. A few days later, Novaya Gazeta, one of Russias only remaining independent daily news outlets, published a report naming Stanislav Dychko as one of several Russian nationals depicted in the video. Novikov said that Novaya Gazeta asked the Investigative Committee to open an inquiry into the murder, but the committee ignored the request. The Guardian has previously reported that Prigozhin was personally recruiting soldiers from Russias extensive penitentiary system in an attempt to compensate for acute shortages of personnel on the battlefield. 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. Ukraine had a responsibility towards Nuzhin and he should have not been exchanged, given the dangers he faced in Russia.. The firefight was described by the Pentagon as an act of self-defense against a unit of pro-Syrian government forces. Explore the benefits of your FP subscription. Between 200 to 300 fighters were killed in the battle, including scores of Russian mercenaries believed to be working in the region to seize control of a nearby gas plant on behalf of EvroPolis. Bouta was born in August 1986 in the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor in a village not far from where one of his alleged assailants, Vlaidslav Apostol, was killed only months after beating Bouta with a sledgehammer. 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. The group sketched out activities like this as a standard mixture for Wagner, providing both military fighters, military and political and economic advice, and also securing business in the countries, often extracting raw materials, for businesses with ties to Wagner or Russia or both. An hour later, the enemy fighters had started to retreat and the American troops stopped firing. Kremlin-backed mercenary soldiers who worked for the Wagner Group could be tested in the Russian courts for the very first time after an all-star team of human rights lawyers filed a case in Moscow accusing the militants of the torture and beheading of a man in Syria. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Delivered Thursday. The newspaper has not released the mans full last name in order to protect his family from potential reprisals. On his way back to Syria in 2017, he was arrested and drafted into the Syrian military. A report published earlier this month by the Washington-based New America Foundation and Arizona State University said that Moscow's reliance on private military companies had brought benefit to the Kremlin, including a cheaper, quicker, and more clandestine way of expanding Russia's influence. Bouta later got in touch with his brother-in-law directly and told him that members of the Syrian Arab Army had taken him to the al-Draij military camp, a well-known deployment hub for Wagner Group fighters. Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitlers. A new report by Frontline Forensics, a joint initiative of Arizona State University and the New America think tank. 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 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. Aircraft across the region were placed on alert, military officials said. His wife, according to the newspaper, deactivated her social media account when she received follow-up questions from its reporter. The reports revelations have chilling implications, as Russian mercenaries motivated by both money and far-right ideology are increasingly operating unchecked in some of the worlds most fragile countries. Lost in the desert, he appears to have sought refuge in al-Shaer gas field, where he was later tortured and killed. At the plant, the commandos were pinned down by enemy artillery and burning through ammunition. The demonstrations come as President Kais Saied depicts opponents and foreigners as threats to national security. U.N. investigators and rights groups say Wagner troops have targeted civilians, conducted mass executions and looted private property in conflict zones. In the past month, the number of Wagner troops in the country has more than tripled to over 1,000. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Evening roundup with our editors favorite stories of the day. Former President Obasanjo warns: Danger looming ahead., Report: Right now in Syria, were in the most aggressive E.W. Wagner would have not been able to commit this medieval execution without the approval of the Russian security services, Osechkin said. Unless you have been on the battlefield in Syria, Libya or the Central African Republic, you most likely have never heard of the Wagner Group, a private military force with close links to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Claiming to have uncovered one of the mercenaries, it wants Moscow to step in. A CAR radio station,Lengo Sengo, was also sanctioned on charges of spreading disinformation on Wagner's behalf. Amy Mackinnon A videos posted online last year appeared to show Wagner contractors using a sledgehammer to execute a fighter they accused of surrendering. Opponents of the dark money paramilitary outfit hope an attack through the courtswhich they expect to take all the way to European Court of Human Rightswill expose the scale of the abuses carried out by the shadowy forces used to conceal the Kremlins off-the-books military adventures all over the world. 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. .. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian revolution last year, a complaint against the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner was filed in 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. Putins Russian Critics AreGrowingEver Louder, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart, The State Departments Lack of Diversity Is Bad for U.S. The Wagner Group: Russia's Blackwater TRT World 2.02M subscribers Subscribe 3.9K 321K views 2 years ago From Ukraine to Syria to the Central African The Kremlin on Monday sought to distance itself from the video, which has been widely discussed on Russian social media, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying it was not our business. Delivered Monday-Saturday. Is the Biden administrations China policy too hawkish? The group's exact African footprint is disputed, but it's growing. Novaya Gazeta called on Russian law enforcement to investigate the case. At worst, officials and experts have said, it could plunge both countries into bloody conflict. A handful of Marines ran ammunition to machine guns and Javelin missile launchers scattered along the berms and wedged among the trucks. The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. Russia and the US have both been on repeated diplomatic missions to Africa since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, trying to win allies and explain their positions as the fighting has serious knock-on impacts for food and fuel prices for some of the poorest parts of the world. At 3 p.m. the Syrian force began edging toward the Conoco plant. Prigozhin, who is under western sanctions for his role in Wagner, on Sunday voiced his approval for the killing, calling Nuzhin a traitor. Amy Mackinnon. The private Russian military force, which has close ties to President Vladimir Putin and has been used in war zones across the world, is expanding its presence in Ukraine. Mercenaries from the Wagner Group in Bangui, Central African Republic, in 2019. relying on tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts. Neither Timchenko nor Prigozhin are expressly named in connection with Boutas killing. 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. Russian trucks heading to Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich Syrian province that borders Iraq, last year. American military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The documents obtained by The Times estimated 200 to 300 of the pro-regime force were killed. The documents reveal that the company earned $162 million from oil and gas fields in central Syria in 2017 alone. What will another year of war look like? He married and started a family. 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. The mercenaries earn of a share of the production proceeds from the oil fields they reclaim, officials said. 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. In a legal criminal complaint announced Monday on behalf of the victim, Muhammad Hamdi Bouta Taha al-Abdullah, attorneys representing the victims brother allege that six Russian citizens who worked on a contract to secure a Russian-Syrian operated gas plant were behind the 2017 killing. The mercenaries loosely coordinate with the Russian military in Syria, although Wagners leaders have reportedly received awards in the Kremlin, and its mercenaries are trained at the Russian Defense Ministrys bases. Marine rocket artillery was fired from the ground. Is the United States becoming protectionist? And neither the United States government understands how terrifying it is nor do its European allies.. This week marks exactly one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. You may opt out at any time. In the interviews, he also criticised the Russian leadership and expressed his desire to join the Ukrainian forces and fight against Moscow. Others remained in their trucks, using a combination of thermal screens and joysticks to control and fire the heavy machine guns affixed on their roofs. The researchers social network analysis also revealed substantial cross-affiliation with Rusich, a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has operated in eastern Ukraine. 'There's no one to help': Russian mercenary industry's toll on families, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. In the American air operations center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and at the Pentagon, confounded military officers and intelligence analysts watched the scene unfold. Wagner Group hired guns hammer a deserter to death Videotaped and shown on the internet, execution is a flesh-and-blood metaphor for the botched Ukraine invasion by Daniel Williams November 17, 2022 Print Yevgeny Nuzhin is pictured alive, before his executioner smashed his skull with a sledgehammer. The men, who appear to be drunk in the video, sought to hide their identities by covering their faces. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. It included some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but American military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government. At a vote at the UN General Assembly this week, Mali and Eritrea went from abstaining in comparablepast votes to joiningwith just five countries typically voting against motions criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine Syria, North Korea, Nicaragua, Belarus, and Russia itself. 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 Last month, the FBI placed Prigozhin on its Most Wanted list in connection with his alleged role in interfering in American elections in 2016 and 2018, offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to his arrest The U.S. government has also sanctioned Prigozhin for his alleged ties to Russian mercenaries affiliated with the Wagner Group. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on Download the new FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. Back at the mission support site, the Green Berets and Marines were preparing a small reaction force roughly 16 troops in four mine-resistant vehicles in case they were needed at the Conoco plant. Eight of the 11 individuals and all seven entities sanctions were linked to Wagner's largest and longest-runningknown operations in Africa, in the Central African Republic and Sudan. The documents described the fighters as a pro-regime force, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a wide-ranging conversation with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the Biden administrations trade and economic policiesand the impacts they have on the world. They beat his extremities with a sledgehammer before decapitating him, setting his body on fire and posing for photographs with his remains. U.S. forces clashed with pro-Syrian government forces, the, of which are believed to have been Russian mercenaries, in Syrias Deir Ezzor province in 2018. Bracing for an attack, the Green Berets prepared to launch the reaction force. The Wagner Group is a mercenary firm that has been heavily involved in the fighting in Ukraine. Russian Paramilitaries Accused of Torture and Beheading in Landmark Legal Case Against Wagner Group IN THE DOCK The Kremlin-backed Wagner Group will be One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. At 8:30 p.m., three Russian-made T-72 tanks vehicles weighing nearly 50 tons and armed with 125-millimeter guns moved within a mile of the Conoco plant. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was indicted in the United States for attempted interference in the 2016 presidential election, is widely regarded as the driving force behind the mercenary group. Governments are almost endlessly prone to throwing good money after bad. The Ukraine Asked whether the Kremlin is aware of accusations of potential war crimes allegedly committed by some of the Russian mercenary groups fighting in Syria, Peskov answered: "This is not a question for the presidential administration." Commanders of the rival militaries had long steered clear of the other by speaking through often-used deconfliction telephone lines. Russian government forces in Syria maintain they were not involved in the battle. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Pretoria on Monday for talks with one of Moscow's most important allies in Africa. And how might that be impacting the world? Then as now, the Kremlin denied any ties to Vagner, but the incident put major pressure on Russia to explain the presence of private mercenaries. Footage of the summary killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin was posted over the weekend by the Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone. Questioned about the clip and Novaya Gazeta's report, the Kremlin denied any knowledge of the men depicted. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. A half-hour later, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces struck. WebIts also the call sign of the groups unconfirmed leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence lieutenant, Wagner fan and suspected neo-Nazi. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the force, then, to be annihilated.. Its not clear how the videos ended up online or why the perpetrators chose to document the killing. Despite the Kremlins denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin. FPs Ravi Agrawal spoke with two of the very best Russia experts:Angela Stent, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author ofPutins World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, and Michael Kofman, the research program director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses. Nuzhin and he should have not been able to commit this medieval execution without the approval the. 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