Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been supported on the battlefield by tens of thousands of mercenaries from a shadowy group led by a businessman and longtime affiliate of president Vladimir Putin.

The Wagner Group is a private military company under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin that cut its teeth in deployments to Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 and has since dispatched troops to several conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including the Syrian Civil War.

In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has proved indispensable, but an apparent power struggle between the Kremlin and the outspoken Mr Prigozhin has led to the group having its wings clipped by Moscow.

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Putin’s Wagner mercenaries throw grenades into houses in Ukraine in May 2022

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Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been supported on the battlefield by tens of thousands of mercenaries from a shadowy group led by a businessman and longtime affiliate of president Vladimir Putin.

The Wagner Group is a private military company under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin that cut its teeth in deployments to Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 and has since dispatched troops to several conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including the Syrian Civil War.

In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has proved indispensable, but an apparent power struggle between the Kremlin and the outspoken Mr Prigozhin has led to the group having its wings clipped by Moscow.

<p>Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin on a tour around the former’s food factory in 2010</p>
Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin on a tour around the former’s food factory in 2010

(AP)
The friction escalated to a crisis point on Friday, 23 June, when Mr Prigozhin accused his country’s defence ministry, Sergei Shoigu, of “destroying” his fighters and concocting lies to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Mr Prigozhin called for armed mutiny in an explosive rant on Telegram in which he vowed to stop the “evil” of the Kremlin’s top brass.

The Wagner Group’s leader did not go after Putin in his tirade, instead alleging that for more than a year and over 350,000 casualties into the war — a large part of which Mr Prigozhin’s group is responsible for — the Russian president had been deceived by Mr Shoigu.

“The war was needed ... so that Shoigu could become a Marshal, so that he could get a second Hero Star… the war wasn’t for demilitarising or de-Nazifying Ukraine. It was needed for an extra star,” Mr Prigozhin said on Telegram, per the BBC.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/wagner-coup-soldiers-moscow-yevgeny-prigozhin-b2363512.html

I pity this man, he only going to bring out the beast in Putin. All Russia rebel were crushed and silence by Putin when he became president.