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In response to
"Iranian attack drones have reached the battlefield, Ukraine’s military says."
by
crash davis
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A video reveals how Russian mercenaries recruit inmates to fight in Ukraine.
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In a video that emerged on Tuesday, the de facto leader of a Russian mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group is seen promising convicts release from prison in return for a six-month combat tour in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The man in the footage appears to be Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin who is rarely seen in public, much less touting his connections to the group so explicitly.
“I’m a representative of a private military company — you have probably heard of it, it is called Wagner,” the man tells a large group of prisoners standing before him in black uniforms. That admission is notable because Mr. Prigozhin has repeatedly denied any link to Wagner.
U.N. investigators and rights groups say Wagner troops, who have been seen in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic, have targeted civilians, conducted mass executions and looted private property in conflict zones. The group’s shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters.
“We definitely see him making a much clearer connection between himself and Wagner than I think we’ve ever seen documented before in terms of his actual direct statement that he leads the Wagner group,” said Jack Margolin, who tracks Wagner’s activities as a program director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, referring to Mr. Prigozhin.
While Wagner is known to recruit from within Russia’s penitentiary system, this appears to be the first time the enlistment process has been captured on camera. It is not known exactly when the speech was filmed, but a reference to a battle in early June suggests it was sometime in the last three months.
Russia has drastically increased its use of Wagner mercenaries since the start of the war in Ukraine to compensate for personnel shortages, particularly in the country’s east.
The video was uploaded to VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network, on Tuesday. While it is unclear whether the footage was overtly filmed — and, if so, who ordered its creation — experts who study Wagner said the video might have been made to boost the group’s profile.
Using visual clues in the video, such as a green-roofed church, a striped chimney and the layout of the buildings, The New York Times and others determined that the speech was delivered at a penal colony in Yoshkar-Ola, a city in the Mari El republic, about 400 miles east of Moscow.
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