Dakota Beacon

A little-reported story of the Ukraine conflict involves a clandestine unit of a Kremlin-backed private military organization which allegedly helped lay the groundwork for the invasion of eastern Ukraine. In 2014, the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic broke away from Ukraine after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. Fighting continued there ever since with an estimated death toll of more than 14,000. Then, several months ago a group of Russian operatives from the shadowy Wagner Group arrived in the separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine dressed as civilians.

While details of the group’s specific mission remain unclear, Wagner’s paramilitary soldiers, comprised of former Russian soldiers, are increasingly involved in some of the bloodiest conflicts in the world where Russia has an interest. The Wagner Group is linked to serious human rights abuses not only in Ukraine but also in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mozambique. In accomplishing their mission the Wagner Group employs gruesome atrocities.

Professor Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert for the UK’s Daily Mail, wrote in an op-ed that he does not doubt the truth of these reports. "Wagner is a vicious bunch of thugs who act with impunity," Galeotti said. "The Group is a clandestine arm of the GRU – Russia’s military intelligence service. They do Putin’s bidding..." He added, "…I learned of Wagner soon after it first appeared in 2014 in the Donbas region of Ukraine, which Russia was then trying to destabilize." Putin wanted soldiers involved whose actions he could plausibly deny.

In 2015, Wagner was operating in Syria where Russians allegedly planned to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Putin knew that sending Russian troops would be unpopular with the Russian people. Instead, he ordered the Wagner Group to wipe out the Syrian rebels according to Galeotti. "Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law so Putin denies using them – implausibly, since Wagner has the use of a Russian army special forces training camp…," the professor wrote. "But his men operated to their own agenda in Syria..."

In 2017 the Wagner Group was reportedly behind the savage mutilation and beheading of a Syrian army deserter. In 2018, US-led coalition forces in Syria injured and killed several dozen Wagner-linked operatives according to reports.

The Wagner Group should be viewed as a classic proxy organization. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, cites in a report, “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.”

Most importantly, the Wagner Group drew renewed attention recently after reports it had positioned troops in Ukraine assigned to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Actually, two different units were sent to kill the president. The Wagner Group was one and a group of Chechen Special Forces was the other. To date, despite several attempts, both groups have failed. The Wagner Group has sustained losses and are said to be furious at the accuracy of the Ukrainian intelligence. One Chechen assassination group was eliminated completely. One report stated that disgruntled individuals from local Russian intelligence (not the Wagner Group) may have tipped off Ukrainian security forces to the details of the assassination attempts.

Wagner Group's founder and leader is Dmitry Utkin, a former lieutenant colonel in Russia's Spetsnaz Special Forces. According to Galeotti, Utkin named the group after his Spetsnaz code name. Furthermore, Richard Wagner was Adolf Hitler's favorite composer, making it an ideal code name for Utkin who reportedly has "an appreciation of the aesthetic of the Third Reich" and has been described as a neo-Nazi.

Although Russian leaders have denied its existence, the Wagner Group is closely linked with Russian armed forces and uses military transports to go in and out of conflict zones. When Wagner mercenaries were sent to Venezuela in 2019 in an ongoing effort to help embattled president Nicolas Maduro, they reportedly arrived onboard Russian Air Force transport planes. On numerous deployments in Syria, Wagner soldiers have flown in and out of the country on military transport aircraft,

The Wagner Group is believed to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with a criminal past and close ties to the Kremlin. Prigozhin is also known as “Putin’s cook” because of restaurants and catering companies he owns having hosted lavish dinner parties for the country’s political elite. According to Galeotti, Putin calls on Prigozhin whenever he wants "something dirty done, such as running the computer ‘troll farms’ that disrupted the 2016 US election by flooding the internet with disinformation." Prigozhin was named by the US Justice Department in a 2018 indictment for their alleged attempts to subvert the 2016 presidential election. He denied the charges.

Should President Zelenskyy be killed or captured, a succession plan for the country's government remains unclear. He had earlier turned down offers from the US to be evacuated from Kyiv. Observing what we have seen regarding Ukraine’s resistance (as painful as that has been), it is not hard to imagine that maybe multiple redundant plans exist. But for now -- mum’s the word.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).