Engaging private contractors in the fighting allowed Moscow to maintain a degree of deniability. While backing the separatist insurgency in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Russia denied sending its own weapons and troops there despite ample evidence to the contrary. Wagner was first spotted in action in eastern Ukraine soon after a separatist conflict erupted there in April 2014, weeks after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. In January, Prigozhin, 61, acknowledged founding, leading and financing the shadowy Wagner company. for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Prigozhin used his connection with Putin to develop a catering business and won lucrative Russian government contracts that earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.” He later expanded into other areas, including media outlets and an infamous “troll factory” that led to his indictment in the U.S. It was in this capacity that he got to know Putin, the city’s deputy mayor at the time. Petersburg in the early 1990s following his release from prison. Prigozhin, who received a 12-year prison term in 1981 on charges of robbery and assault, started a restaurant business in St. WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND OF WAGNER’S LEADER? Here is a look at Wagner’s history and its role in the fighting. Ferocious house-to house fighting there has produced some of the bloodiest encounters since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Russia’s nine-month campaign to take Bakhmut has made the city the focus of the war’s longest battle. He threatened to pull out his soldiers from the city of Bakhmut next week, citing high casualties and ammunition shortages. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy entrepreneur with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has led the push to jump-start Russia’s stalemated offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province. A threat by the owner of private Russian military company Wagner on Friday to withdraw his fighters from the battle to seize an eastern Ukrainian city is another flareup in his dispute with Russia’s regular military over credit and tactics in the war.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |