They’re accused of human rights violations around the world. Now, Ukraine’s government claims they are on a mission to kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This is the Wagner group, Putin’s brutal shadow army.
This is the Wagner group, Putin’s brutal shadow army.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Vagner is Putin's instrument for resolving issues by force, when action has to be taken
00:20immediately, urgently, and in the most concealed way possible.
00:24Vagner is a diffuse network of different companies and individuals that conducts everything
00:30from private military activity, training, direct combat support, to political interference.
00:38It does that in collaboration with the Russian state.
00:41It helps the Kremlin to execute on its foreign policy objectives at a lower cost and with
00:46a greater degree of deniability than if regular Russian forces were being used.
00:54I really focus on those where they have an active military presence, an active sort of
01:02political interference presence.
01:04Those include Syria, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mali, as well as Libya.
01:12They've been active in other places and then they claim to have activity and a few others.
01:18Ukraine is also important historically.
01:20That is really sort of the genesis of the Vagner group is in Ukraine.
01:27The Vagner group has been accused of a wide variety of different human rights abuses.
01:31Some of those are better documented than others.
01:34In Syria, we know specifically from video evidence that the Vagner group was involved
01:38in the torture and execution of a deserter from the Syrian military.
01:44Those individuals have never faced justice.
01:47That court case is ongoing in Russia, but the Russian authorities have demonstrated
01:50no real interest in pursuing it.
01:52An unarmed man taunted and tortured by four Russian-speaking men in military fatigues.
01:59One of the men was identified in a 2019 investigation published by the independent Russian paper
02:04Novaya Gazeta as an alleged member of Vagner.
02:07In places like Sudan and the Central African Republic, there are widespread reports of
02:12violence against civilians, all of which become more and more consistent with each
02:17other and I think point to a broader sort of pattern of abuse, particularly in their
02:22approach to counterinsurgency.
02:23The result of that is that there's arbitrary detention, summary execution, torture, general
02:29abuse of the civilian population.
02:42Evgeny Prigozhin is a Russian businessman.
02:57He got his start in the food industry and he made his fortune basically doing major
03:02catering contracts for the Kremlin and the military.
03:07Prigozhin is alleged by folks including the U.S. Treasury to be basically the patron behind
03:12the Wagner Group, as well as a series of sort of interrelated political influence operations.
03:17Most infamously, the troll farm, as it's known, the Internet Research Agency, which is famous
03:23for its involvement in U.S. election interference.
03:40Private military companies are not legal in the Russian Federation, which means that there
03:44is no specific entity that is the Wagner Group LLC.
03:48Because of that, because of the sort of murky legal status of the employees of the Wagner
03:52Group and the Wagner Group as an entity overall, it's really hard for there to be any kind
03:57of legal accountability.
04:13With the Wagner Group, there's always a lot that's uncertain.
04:16And I tend to be really skeptical of most claims.
04:19Writing about the Wagner Group, reporting on them, researching them is really hard because
04:22they actively misrepresent what they're doing.
04:25They will say that there are places that they're not.
04:27They will attempt to inflate their own capabilities and the size of their forces.
04:32I do believe that the Wagner Group is present in Ukraine right now, even if it's there under
04:36a different name.
04:37The Times report indicated that there were Russian mercenaries that were active in Kiev
04:43who were basically attempting to kill Zelensky and a number of different other high-ranking
04:47Ukrainian officials.
04:49To me, that is plausible.
04:50We've also seen reports, I think originally from the New York Times, that there were Wagner
04:56combatants active in eastern Ukraine.
04:58That is a little bit more consistent with their normal activity where they'd be working
05:02alongside proxy forces.