The EU yesterday agreed that it’s time to sanction Russia’s Wagner Group. The preliminary agreement was reached as the government of Mali is reportedly mulling inviting the mercenary outfit into the country.
A number of EU countries—as well as the United States—claim Wagner is a proxy force for the Kremlin, and with good reason. Wagner is financed by a close associate of Russian President Putin—Evgeniy Prigozhin. A UN working group in March described Wagner as a Russia-based organization, which “does not seem to have a legal existence,” but is a web of enterprises operating globally while sharing management and ownership structures.
In 2017, Treasury sanctioned PMC Wagner and its founder, Dmitriy Utkin, for its activities in Ukraine.
PMC Wagner is a private military company that has recruited and sent soldiers to fight alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine. PMC Wagner is being designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or having engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Dmitriy Utkin is the founder and leader of PMC Wagner. Utkin is being designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or having engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine; and for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, PMC Wagner.
No one had ever heard of Wagner before Russia’s invasion, but since then, a web of Wagner paramilitary entities has spread its paws into countries such as Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya, Sudan, and others. Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned by OFAC since 2016, for various activities, including his support for Russian government officials under the Ukraine EO 13661, cyber, and election interference, has not only been the financier of the infamous Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency—a tool used by Russia to interfere in our elections—but also done extensive business with the Russian Defense Ministry, and according to a 2016 Treasury press release, a company with significant ties to him holds a contract to build a military base near Russia/Ukraine border. Treasury also specified that Russia has been building additional military bases near the Ukrainian border and has used these bases as staging points for deploying soldiers into Ukraine.
Pretty interesting for someone who started out as a sausage maker and has had no military service under his belt. He would certainly be an appropriate middleman to provide the Kremlin the plausible deniability it seeks as it gets involved in the world’s hotspots to advance Russia’s influence, no?
Private military entities are illegal in Russia, but somehow a tablet discovered on a battlefield in Libya that was left by a Wagner operative provided BBC with unprecedented insights into the group’s operations all in Russian, including military maps.
Oops!
…it was a maps app that stood out - layers of military maps of the front line, all marked in Russian. Most of the location dots were clustered in the suburb of Ain Zara in south Tripoli, where Wagner fighters had battled with the GNA between February and the end of May 2020.
The maps corresponded with drone footage of Ain Zara, also on the tablet. The video showed the suburb deserted - its residents having fled.
A BBC reporter who had been investigating Wagner for the past four years started researching possible Russian code names on the tablet, who he assessed could have been associates of the tablet’s owner. He cross-referenced the code names with a database of Wagner fighters set up by Ukrainian volunteers, and a leaked UN report listing Wagner fighters in Libya, and he found some interesting tidbits.
We believe one of the fighters - labelled ‘Metla’ [Russian for “broom”] on the tablet - is a 36-year-old Russian called Fedor Metelkin from the North Caucasus.
His personal Wagner number, published on the Ukrainian database, is below 3,000. This suggests he joined Wagner fairly early in its operations - five or six years ago - when it was fighting in eastern Ukraine in support of Russia-backed separatists. From what we understand, it’s usual for the same fighters to move from one foreign conflict zone to another.
No clues about the identity of other mercenaries have emerged, but the BBC spoke with two former Wagner fighters who confirmed—on the condition of anonymity—that many of those who started out as fighters in Ukraine, went on to participate in operations in Libya.
The former Wagner fighters also confirmed that those who try out for these jobs do not put in applications for Wagner group, but rather apply for short-term contracts as security personnel for various shell companies or oil rig workers. Only after they pass background and physical checks, do they go on to Wagner’s fighter training facility in Krasnodar.
Russian codes, Russian fighters, almost certainly a Russian financier with connections to the Defense Ministry and close ties with Putin, and (quite coincidentally, I’m sure), engagement in regions that are strategically important to the Kremlin… In addition, if private mercenary groups are illegal in Russia, why is the Kremlin allowing this Wagner network to operate, given all the evidence about its paramilitary activities in the world’s hot zones?
Back to the present…
Reuters reported in September that Mali was close to cementing a deal with Wagner to allow the Russian mercenaries into Mali.
Four sources said the Wagner Group would be paid about 6 billion CFA francs ($10.8 million) a month for its services. One security source working in the region said the mercenaries would train Malian military and provide protection for senior officials.
A Malian junta official also publicly said that “Public opinion in Mali is in favour of more cooperation with Russia given the ongoing security situation. But no decision (on the nature of that cooperation) has been made.” Certainly, this is not an outright admission, but it’s an interesting statement that gives insight into the country’s state of mind regarding its engagements with Russia. Mali is certainly not opposed to cooperation with Wagner, especially since the EU could be designating the junta as well for its coup earlier this year, it seems, and the statement is not even close to a denial Mali’s willingness to engage with a US-designated entity. They do need their Russian pals, as the West tries to pressure them to restore civilian rule.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the company had anything to do with “official” Russia and claims there has been no evidence of illegal activity (save, of course, for the existence of a Russian paramilitary organization, which is prohibited by Russian law and a possible human rights violation lawsuit filed in March, which should expose some interesting activities).
Not that it will matter, because if there’s one thing Russia is good at, it’s sticking to its message, no matter how much evidence is presented to the contrary.
But you can be sure that when the EU does take action against Wagner, Russia will issue an immediate condemnation of “harmful” sanctions that are really meant to provoke Russia and ruin what’s left of its relationship with the West. It sounds like the bloc will use existing authorities to target Wagner and those connected to the network, which means that the sanctions package should be ready by the time the EU foreign ministers meet next month.