Moscow, Jan 10 (BLAZETRENDS).- The Wagner group is a private military company created by the Russian businessman Yevgueni Prigozhin. Despite the fact that these formations are prohibited by the country’s legislation, it has become the main assault detachment of the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
Despite the fact that there are no verifiable figures on its number of troops, some Western publications indicate that it has more than 50,000 men and all kinds of weapons.
The mercenaries of the Wagner Group, which calls itself “The Orchestra” and its members “musicians”, according to Prigozhin, are “heroes who defended the Syrian people and other peoples of underprivileged Arab, African and Latin American countries, and became in one of the pillars of our homeland”. Other voices, however, criticize this group of mercenaries and even accuse them of war crimes.
The birth of “The Orchestra”
In September of last year, after complaining on several occasions against those who linked him to the Wagner Group, the businessman finally admitted that he was the one who had founded it.
“In 2014, when the genocide of the Russian population of Donbas began (…) I, like many businessmen, went to the polygons where ‘Cossacks’ met and tried with money to gather a group that would travel to defend the Russians” revealed the businessman in a comment posted on the social network VKontakte.
However, according to his words, he soon realized that half of the ‘Cossacks’ and the paramilitaries were scammers and that those who received the money hired volunteers who were sent without equipment to certain death.
“So I went to one of the polygons and took care of it myself. I cleaned old weapons myself, saw the issue of bulletproof vests, and found specialists who helped me. At that time, on May 1, 2014, the group of patriots that later received the name Wagner Group was born,” Prigozhin explained.
Putin’s chef
The businessman, a native of St. Petersburg, is nicknamed “(Vladimir) Putin’s chef” due to his proximity to the Russian president and his restaurant business, which he set up after being pardoned from prison in 1990, where he spent almost ten years for various crimes.
According to an investigation by imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni, Prigozhin, who began selling hot dogs at street stalls, has won state contracts worth at least 2.5 billion euros, including one to distribute food to the Russian army.
The United States sanctioned this oligarch for his role in the campaign of interference and disinformation, especially against the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential elections, which Republican Donald Trump won.
The Wagner Group in Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought the Wagner Group, and in particular its founder, to the fore, displacing even the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, from the role of leader most devoted to the Kremlin’s cause.
Prigozhin recruited thousands of prisoners to fight on the front lines, some 50,000, as he himself acknowledged in an interview at the end of May.
“Either a private military company and prisoners or your children,” the founder of the Wagner Group responded to criticism of sending prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
In exchange, after six months, the convicted mercenaries received a pardon and returned home.
On June 18, the head of the Group announced that a total of 32,000 Russian ex-convicts had concluded their contracts with the paramilitary training and have returned to their homes.
They all took part in the special military operation on the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics.
Bakhmut retreat
The Wagner paramilitary group, the spearhead of the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine, announced the seizure of Bakhmut, a strategic communications hub in the area, last May, after ten months of intense fighting.
Once the mission was over, they officially handed over control of the city to regular Russian troops, but not before launching a taunt at the military headquarters in Moscow, which Prigozhin has lashed out and even insulted in recent months, denouncing the lack of resources and logistical support at the front.
For the capture of the city, the mercenaries have paid a high price: 16,000 dead, 10,000 of them recruited convicts, according to their own numbers.
The changing of the guard has brought with it a decrease in hand-to-hand combat and the intensification of the use of artillery and aviation against the Ukrainian forces.
It has also led to the emergence on the scene of the war of another unit that is already facing the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south of the country: the Akhmat special unit, sent by the leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzán Kadírov.