Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. Four days before the newspaper report, the Syrian news site Jesr Press published what it claimed was the victim's name: a 33-year-old from Deir al-Zor who had left the country when civil war broke out but reportedly returned in 2017 to join government forces propping up the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. In Syria, A Mutilated Corpse, Video Evidence, And New Scrutiny For Russian Mercenaries. 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. "The advent of the digital age means [such companies'] activities are often hidden in plain sight, and disinformation is no longer a fail-safe remedy when the secrecy of covert operations is compromised.". Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitlers. 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 latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. And at a minimum, squaring off in crowded battlefields has added to heightened tensions between Russia and the United States as they each seek to exert influence in the Middle East. Who Is Vagner? A BBC Russian investigation in 2018 highlighted the deaths of Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria. The details of the Feb. 7 firefight were gleaned from interviews and documents newly obtained by The New York Times. 'There's no one to help': Russian mercenary industry's toll on families, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Although on Western radars for some time, the group and the extent of its activities has come more clearly to light sinceRussia's invasion of Ukraine with Moscow no longer flatly denying the organization's existence, and Prigozhin having come forward and confirmed suspicions of his leadership role in the group. The documents obtained by The Times estimated 200 to 300 of the pro-regime force were killed. .. On the tenth anniversary of the Syrian revolution last year, a complaint against the Russian private military company (PMC) Wagner was filed in As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the force, then, to be annihilated.. A new report by Frontline Forensics, a joint initiative of Arizona State University and the New America think tank. The most pointed criticisms of the war are coming from those charged with fighting it. NPR's Charles Maynes offers a portrait from Prigozhin's home town Saint Petersburg. 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. In another part of the video that originally surfaced in 2017, the four men laugh to a soundtrack of Russian rock music as they use a sledgehammer to crush the hand of a man shown pinned to the ground wearing bloodied civilian clothes in what appears to be an industrial zone. 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. U.S. officials warned that the group was recruiting Syrians skilled in urban combat to fight in Ukraine. After working for a time in Lebanon, Bouta decided to return to his family in Deir Ezzor. Activists argue the struggles for state transparency and national liberation are one and the same. Russia has played all sides in the conflict to get a seat at the negotiating table. They inspected their weapons and ensured the trucks were loaded with anti-tank missiles, thermal optics and food and water. 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. The air was filled with dust and shrapnel. Russian government forces in Syria maintain they were not involved in the battle. At the plant, the commandos were pinned down by enemy artillery and burning through ammunition. Within days of the second tranche of videos being posted by open source investigators on Twitter, reporters with al-Jessr Press, a Paris-based media outlet that reports on Syria, published the very first account of Boutas killing. Putins Russian Critics AreGrowingEver Louder, The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart, The State Departments Lack of Diversity Is Bad for U.S. The Russian president got many things wrong about invading Ukrainebut not everything. 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. Explore the benefits included in your subscription. The lawsuit marks the first known attempt to bring to account anyone linked to the highly secretive network of covert operators financed and managed by close inner-circle associates of President Vladimir Putin. Is Weiss correct? Is Weiss correct? 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. 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. As the Green Berets and Marines neared the Conoco plant around 11:30 p.m., they were forced to stop. They would face asset freezes and a travel ban. 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. A 2017 video posted online showed a group of armed people, reported to be Wagner contractors, torturing a Syrian man, beating him to death with a sledgehammer and cutting his head before mutilating and then burning his body. The demonstrations come as President Kais Saied depicts opponents and foreigners as threats to national security. In the video, Nuzhin was shown lying down with his head taped to a brick wall as an unidentified man in combat clothing hits him with a sledgehammer. Russia And how might that be impacting the world? This style of hybrid warfare has become a cornerstone of Russias efforts to project its interests abroad. The victim is reported to be Mohammad Taha al Ismail Abdallah of Deir ez-Zor, whom the contractors accused of deserting from the Syrian army. 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. Syrian authorities arrested Bouta as he crossed the border and turned him over to members of the Syrian military. A U.S. military convoy drives on a Syrian highway on September 29, 2017. The fighters were reportedly wounded in a United States airstrike near the city. But Wagners work, which has reportedly been rewarded with oil concessions in Syria, has largely taken place in the shadows, and the video is a rare, shocking look at the groups actions in Syria. You may opt out at any time. A few of the commandos, including Air Force combat controllers, worked the radios to direct the next fleet of bombers flying toward the battlefield. Russian authorities ignored requests by the media and rights activists to investigate the killing. Twitter:@ak_mack, NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Companies linked to the Wagner group are snapping up oil and gas leaseswith an eye to pumping influence, not oil. But, as in many other developing countries, Syrias nationalized energy sector is highly reliant on external backing from foreign firms for capital-intensive upstream investment in exploration and development. "The Wagner Group's activities are a threat for the people in the countries where they operate and the European Union,"EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said. The report also revealed that at least one of the Russian-speaking men in the video had fought in the embattled region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine before traveling to Syria to work for a contingent affiliated to the Wagner Group. The researchers social network analysis also revealed substantial cross-affiliation with Rusich, a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that has operated in eastern Ukraine. Two years after the United States clashed with some sort of Wagner Group contingent in Deir Ezzor, the United States government still doesnt know anything about the organizational structure of these military contingents, Rondeaux said. 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. South Africa and Russia deepen military ties, Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy calls for ICC Russia probe, More than mercenaries: Russia's Wagner Group in Africa, Russian troops step up fight to cut off Bakhmut supply lines, French court dismisses case against TotalEnergies, Pakistan: The school that's free for Afghan refugee children, New hurdles for sea rescuers in the Mediterranean, Tunisia: Presidential scapegoating stokes fear and support, Canada Soccer president resigns amid equal pay dispute, committed in the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan, the most influential form of Russian engagement in Africa today, has also prompted the country to step up its diplomatic drive in Africa, Mali's ruling junta last year forced French troops out of the country soon after committing a coup and welcomed in Wagner forces, At a vote at the UN General Assembly this week. With Putins help, Assad has constrained the capacity of the United Nations to deliver health supplies in opposition-controlled territory, which faces rising risk of the coronavirus. Wagner Ever since Washington passed its Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies and investment opportunities for clean energy initiatives, a cShow morehorus of lawmakers in Europe and Asia have begun to say the United States is fostering unfair competition. Stay updated on the topics you care about with email alerts. Gruesome Soundtrack Russian trucks heading to Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich Syrian province that borders Iraq, last year. Osechkin said all signs pointed to Wagners involvement in the killing and said he planned to send a request to Russias authorities to launch a criminal case. 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 now little doubt that Putin failed in his initial goals: Kyiv is still Show morestanding, Ukrainians are determined to keep fighting, and the West has so far stayed resolute in its support of Ukraine. But beyond the goals of one leader in Moscow, it is also clear that Ukraine has suffered horrors of a historic nature. which was captured on video at the One of the individuals sanctioned on Saturday came under an EU sanctions regime for Mali specifically. Questions remain about exactly who the Russian mercenaries were, and why they attacked. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. The clip purportedly showing a brutal murder in Syria resurfaced this week after apparently being filmed in 2017. The Novaya Gazeta report added more clarity to an incident that prompted anger and confusion when evidence of it first surfaced. If for some reason the case does not go forward in Moscow, Darwish said, it is likely that he, Novikov and others will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. MOSCOW -- The graphic video shows four men in camouflage gear exchanging jokes in unaccented Russian as they pour flammable liquid over a man's mutilated corpse strung up on two wooden beams. It was dark, according to the documents, and the roads were littered with felled power lines and shell craters. Only FP subscribers can submit questions for FP Live interviews. 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 Family members of a former Russian prison inmate, who defected to Ukraine after being recruited by the Kremlin-linked private military group Wagner, have By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. Mourning has consumed Xinjiang scholars for a region they can no longer reach. 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. Roughly 20 miles away, at a base known as a mission support site, a team of Green Berets and a platoon of infantry Marines stared at their computer screens, watching drone feeds and passing information to the Americans at the gas plant about the gathering fighters. Delivered Monday-Saturday. Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors. Its not clear how the videos ended up online or why the perpetrators chose to document the killing. Ukraine had a responsibility towards Nuzhin and he should have not been exchanged, given the dangers he faced in Russia.. It sheds new light on the networks operations and reveals how the killing became a rallying point for Russian ultranationalists online. The Kremlin-backed Wagner Group will be exposed to legal proceedings for the first time after video emerged of man in Syria being beaten with a sledgehammer and then beheaded. The documents reveal that the company earned $162 million from oil and gas fields in central Syria in 2017 alone. In 2018, American authorities filed criminal charges against Prigozhin for alleged financial ties to the internet troll farm accused of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. At 1 a.m., with the artillery fire dwindling, the team of Marines and Green Berets pulled up to the Conoco outpost and began firing. Some of the fighters appeared to have been recruited from Syria and Libya, the Pentagons spokesman, John F. Kirby, has said. The others retreated under merciless airstrikes from the United States, returning later to retrieve their battlefield dead. Apostols family have reportedly confirmed that he worked as a private security contractor in Syria, and that he was one of several hundred Russians killed in a U.S. airstrike in the northeastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor. 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. 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. Wagner has repeatedly been accused of war crimes and human rights abuses, including of the torture and slaying of prisoners in Syria, where it has been fighting alongside the Russian army and the government of Bashar al-Assad. This week, Moscow denied reports of Wagner already being operative in Burkina Faso another West African country that recently underwent a coup, fell out with former colonial power France, and is showing no sign of a return to democratic rule. 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. 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. "Yet, [private military companies] also pose substantial risks for a regime determined to keep a lid on domestic outcry over its military adventurism and to manage blowback," the report said. WebIts also the call sign of the groups unconfirmed leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence lieutenant, Wagner fan and suspected neo-Nazi. Russia. Neither Timchenko nor Prigozhin are expressly named in connection with Boutas killing. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. 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. "I'm convinced this has nothing to do with the Russian military operation in Syria," Peskov told reporters. At some point in late March or early April, he escaped on foot from the T4 air base in Homs. 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. Russias Wagner Group have as much power in Kremlin as ministers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. His wife, according to the newspaper, deactivated her social media account when she received follow-up questions from its reporter. A half-hour later, the Russian mercenaries and Syrian forces struck. Under a 2019 U.S. law known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, anyone connected to war crimes in Syria under Assads regime could be subject to sanctions. The 20-mile drive was made all the more difficult since the trucks did not turn on their headlights, relying solely on thermal-imaging cameras to navigate. There is a dynamic evolution in the fusion of Russian ultranationalist groups and Russian paramilitaries going on that nobody is really paying attention to or seeing yet, said Candace Rondeaux, a professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and the author of the report. video Russia's notorious Wagner group admits to recruiting Zambian inmate who died fighting in Ukraine Prigozhin above all is a sharp-eyed opportunist. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. 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