What government officials are saying in public, and private, is fascinatingand full of contradictions. 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. Captured wounded fighters of Russias Wagner mercenary group: Ilya, 30, left, and Mikhail, 35, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on Monday. They provide the Pentagons first public on-the-ground accounting of one of the single bloodiest battles the American military has faced in Syria since deploying to fight the Islamic State. It wasnt until November 2019, when further videos emerged, that journalists were able to identify the perpetrators as well as the victim. In a phone interview with The Daily Beast on Saturday, Darwish said that the case against the six Wagner Group paramilitaries is being lodged under articles in the Russian criminal code that call for the prosecution of anyone implicated in torture, grievous bodily injury, and murder. Is it? Explore the benefits of your FP subscription. On March 27, 2017, Bouta traveled across the border from Lebanon into Syria at the Beirut-Damascus crossing with a group of young men from his village. Initially, Russian officials said only four Russian citizens but perhaps dozens more were killed; a Syrian officer said around 100 Syrian soldiers had died. U.S. forces clashed with pro-Syrian government forces, the majority of which are believed to have been Russian mercenaries, in Syrias Deir Ezzor province in 2018. Before setting it alight and watching it burn as they pose for the camera, they scrawl a Russian phrase praising the country's airborne forces on its chest. Some of the Green Berets and Marines took aim from exposed hatches. The Wagner Group is a very convenient fiction for a lot of people in Russia who both want to get rich and project power abroad, Rondeaux said. Watch the conversation or read the condensed transcript. These soldiers are likely to be used as cannon fodder to try to limit Russian military losses, he has said. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a frank discussion about the Biden administrations China policy and alternatives that it ought to consider. 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. Thousands of Russian contractors fought in Syria alongside a 2015 military intervention by Putin that helped turn the tide in the countrys civil war and saved the government of Bashar al-Assad. Wagner would have not been able to commit this medieval execution without the approval of the Russian security services, Osechkin said. Delivered Thursday. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. A team of about 30 Delta Force soldiers and Rangers from the Joint Special Operations Command were working alongside Kurdish and Arab forces at a small dusty outpost next to a Conoco gas plant, near the city of Deir al-Zour. The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony last month. At this point, members of the group Bouta was traveling with notified Boutas brother-in-law, who was in Lebanon at the time, that the Syrian military had taken Bouta into custody. Afterwards, the men posed for a photograph with the suspended body, across the torso of which they wrote: For the VDV [Russian airborne forces] and an out-of-focus word that appears to say razvedka, a term for military intelligence. Subscribers can send in questions in advance. "In exchange for access to natural resources principally diamonds and gold Wagner has provided President Faustin Archange-Touadera with military and political support, which has proven pivotal in sustaining his embattled presidency against an onslaught of rebel groups. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Advertisement. It was dark, according to the documents, and the roads were littered with felled power lines and shell craters. Their structure allows them to have plausible deniability and to create distance between the Russian state and the group, she said. United States F-22 stealth fighter jets above Syria, where the prospect of Russian military forces and American troops colliding has long been feared as the Cold War adversaries take opposing sides in the countrys seven-year civil war. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. Wagner Group hired guns hammer a deserter to death Videotaped and shown on the internet, execution is a flesh-and-blood metaphor for the botched Ukraine invasion by Daniel Williams November 17, 2022 Print Yevgeny Nuzhin is pictured alive, before his executioner smashed his skull with a sledgehammer. The Wagner Group itself was already placed under EU sanctions in 2021, the US recently labeled it a "transnational criminal organization.". The Conoco outpost was hit with a mixture of tank fire, large artillery and mortar rounds, the documents show. to the research by Frontline Forensics, which was published by New America. Then as now, the Kremlin denied any ties to Vagner, but the incident put major pressure on Russia to explain the presence of private mercenaries. Were going to Moscow, to their territory, to their courts, and to their jurisdiction, Darwish said. The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were identified by the Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta as private military security contractors for the so-called Wagner Group. The demonstrations come as President Kais Saied depicts opponents and foreigners as threats to national security. Before he was killed, Bouta said Russian speaking soldiers had press ganged him and several others in custody at al-Draij into fighting contingents deployed to Homs to seize and protect oil and gas infrastructure. A video of a second apparent execution using a sledgehammer was posted by a Wagner-linked blogger on Monday. Hes a graduate of Harvards Davis Center and a recipient of New York University's Reporting Award and the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Journalism Award. Its officers serving in Syria are reported to earn up to 300,000 roubles (3,800; $5,300) a month. Ilya Novikov, one of the Russian attorneys who filed the ground-breaking legal complaint, said in a written statement that he and his co-counsel Petr Zaikin, decided to initiate the case after a demand for Russias Investigative Committee, the countrys top prosecutorial body, apparently fell flat. Almost a year later, the court found that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which had the power to open To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Russian who filmed prisoner being tortured to death worked for firm with links to Kremlin. A video surfaced on social media showing 2 #Wagner mercenaries torturing, beheading & lynching-on-fire a #Syria -n army defector in 2017, 'just for fun.' At least one Marine exposed himself to incoming fire as he used a missile guidance computer to find targets locations and pass them on to the commandos calling in the airstrikes. In Syria, A Mutilated Corpse, Video Evidence, And New Scrutiny For Russian Mercenaries. NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: The documents reveal that the company. Known colloquially as the Wagner Group, the contingent has been linked to a network of Russian firms that U.S. and European authorities say are financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a key player in Putins inner circle known as Putins chef. Although the Wagner Group has been implicated in several violations of international law, including skirting a UN arms embargo in Libya, the Moscow legal filing on Boutas case marks the first time that any official complaint has been brought in court against the private security contingent in connection with an alleged war crime. Russia Novaya Gazeta said it had first identified Stanislav D using online facial recognition software, then corroborated the results by showing he was a member of the private military company using a leaked copy of his passport. Questioned about the clip and Novaya Gazeta's report, the Kremlin denied any knowledge of the men depicted. The men responsible for murdering Bouta are believed to have worked for EvroPolis, a company that exemplifies the way organizations within the network have blended business and warfare. 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. Flashes from tank muzzles, antiaircraft weapons and machine guns lit up the air. The brief filed on Friday in connection with Boutas case contends that the Russian government holds effective control over the Russian private military contingent that killed Bouta during operations at the al-Shaer gas plant. The documents reveal that the company earned $162 million from oil and gas fields in central Syria in 2017 alone. 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. Late last November, videos of a gruesome killing went viral on Russian social networks. A organizao teria sido fundada por volta de 2014, na Rssia, seu lder atual o ex-oficial do exrcito russo Dmitriy "Wagner" Valeryevich Utkin. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. Bracing for an attack, the Green Berets prepared to launch the reaction force. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. 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. 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. Russian authorities ignored requests by the media and rights activists to investigate the killing. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? But, a federal arrest warrant issued for Prigozhin in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 16 would seem to indicate renewed interest at the Department of Justice in seeing Prigozhin brought to account. Amy Mackinnon. Mr. Utkin is said to have chosen Wagner to honor the composer, who was a favorite of Hitlers. This has forced us, as human rights defenders, to turn to Russian investigative authorities, Novikov said. The mercenary, who was been identified as Stanislav D by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, is a former police officer from the Stavropol region in southern Russia. Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law. Russia Forced Me to Flee. They are the Swiss Army knives of modern Russian warfare and serve as force multipliers, arms merchants, trainers of local military and security personnel, and political consultants, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Opponents of the dark money paramilitary outfit hope an attack through the courtswhich they expect to take all the way to European Court of Human Rightswill expose the scale of the abuses carried out by the shadowy forces used to conceal the Kremlins off-the-books military adventures all over the world. The mercenaries earn of a share of the production proceeds from the oil fields they reclaim, officials said. Following his capture by Ukrainian forces in September, Nuzhin gave a series of interviews in the country, in which he said he had joined the Wagner group to get out of prison and that he quickly hatched a plan to surrender to Ukraine. In total the bloc targeted 11 individuals and seven entities it said was linked to the once-secretive private military and economic arm of Russian foreign policy controlled by a historically close ally of Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin. As the Green Berets and Marines neared the Conoco plant around 11:30 p.m., they were forced to stop. The fighters were reportedly wounded in a United States airstrike near the city. Representatives for Stroytransgaz and Prigozhins main company Concord Consulting and Management did not respond to requests for comment made before lawyers representing Boutas family went public with details of the Moscow court filing on Monday. They inspected their weapons and ensured the trucks were loaded with anti-tank missiles, thermal optics and food and water. Despite the Kremlins denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin. Russian Paramilitaries Accused of Torture and Beheading in Landmark Legal Case Against Wagner Group IN THE DOCK The Kremlin-backed Wagner Group will be Ahrar Houran, which he helped to found, confirmed the news. 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. 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. WASHINGTON The artillery barrage was so intense that the American commandos dived into foxholes for protection, emerging covered in flying dirt and debris to fire back at a column of tanks advancing under the heavy shelling. The air was filled with dust and shrapnel. Saturday's additional sanctions were decided "in view of the international dimension and gravity of the group's activities, as well as its destabilizing impact on the countries where it is active,"said a statement from the European Council. 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. EvroPolis was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 for being owned or controlled by Prigozhin. According to a report this monthon Wagner by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the CAR is Wagner's biggest African base of operations. Online messages sent to him and his wife by the Guardian were not immediately returned on Thursday. Hopefully, this will open the door for all the crimes committed by the Wagner Group not only in Syria, said Mazen Darwish, one of several human rights activists pressing for justice in the case and director general of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. It has since been hailing Russia as contributing to an end to post-colonial French influence in the country. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Russian corporate records and customs documents reviewed by C4ADS as well as EvroPolis company records provided by the London-based Dossier Center show that the company was offered a 25 percent share of the revenues of Syrian oil and gas fields it was able to seize from the Islamic State. Delivered Monday-Friday. The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week. Advocacy groups from Russia, France and Syria have filed a legal case against Russian mercenary group Wagner, accusing its fighters of torturing and beheading a Syrian man in 2017. An analysis of Russian social media groups for followers of the Wagner Group as well as the friend networks of individuals who shared details of Boutas murder online revealed a burgeoning online movement of Russian ultranationalists with an abiding interest in mercenary culture who claimed to have served in Russian military units, according to the research by Frontline Forensics, which was published by New America. Wagner forces have appeared in Ukraine, presumably to fight alongside Russian troops in Mr. Putins war. If Putin had hoped to weaken NATO, the very opposite has happened, with Finland and Sweden on the cusp of joining the transatlantic military alliance. Family members had confirmed his death to local press, saying he had returned to Syria from Lebanon in 2017 when he was summoned to fight but later deserted. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on. The Kremlin on Monday sought to distance itself from the video, which has been widely discussed on Russian social media, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying it was not our business. Russian corporate records and customs documents reviewed by C4ADS as well as EvroPolis company records provided by the London-based Dossier Center show that the company was offered a 25 percent share of the revenues of Syrian oil and gas fields it was able to seize from the Islamic State. Kremlin-backed mercenary soldiers who worked for the Wagner Group could be tested in the Russian courts for the very first time after an all-star team of human rights lawyers filed a case in Moscow accusing the militants of the torture and beheading of a man in Syria. 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. Anyone can read what you share. The firefight was described by the Pentagon as an act of self-defense against a unit of pro-Syrian government forces. 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. A new report by Frontline Forensics, a joint initiative of Arizona State University and the New America think tank, published on Tuesday explores the circumstances of Boutas death using company records and social media analysis. In leaked documents, he wrote that he joined Wagner in 2016 to protect the interests of the Russian Federation abroad. American military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops. The Paris-based Syrian investigative news site, Want to read more on this topic or region? Want to read more on this topic or region? The documents described the fighters as a pro-regime force, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Claiming to have uncovered one of the mercenaries, it wants Moscow to step in. His wife, according to the newspaper, deactivated her social media account when she received follow-up questions from its reporter. The number of casualties from the Feb. 7 fight is in dispute. At one point in the video, a second severed head can be seen lying on the ground. Bouta is believed to have been killed in the spring of 2017, and a video of his death first emerged online in June 2017. Russia has played all sides in the conflict to get a seat at the negotiating table. By early evening, more than 500 troops and 27 vehicles including tanks and armored personnel carriers had amassed. From their outpost, the commandos watched the mercenaries and Syrian fighters return to collect their dead. The case is being lodged jointly by lawyers and advocates associated with Darwishs organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow, and the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris. U.N. investigators and rights groups say Wagner troops have targeted civilians, conducted mass executions and looted private property in conflict zones. 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. 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. The other two Wagner-affiliated individuals sanctioned were suspected of war crimes in Ukraine, after reports of the organization having to move some of its fighting forces from African countries like Libya and Sudan to reinforce closer to Russia in recent months. Wagner is estimated to have as many as 2,500 men in Syria. In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. Boutas slaying is symptomatic of the accountability vacuum in which the Wagner Group operates. Its not clear how the videos ended up online or why the perpetrators chose to document the killing. It operates in a situation of opacity, theres a real lack of transparency and thats the whole point, said Sorcha MacLeod, chair of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries, which has scrutinized the group. Questions remain about exactly who the Russian mercenaries were, and why they attacked. But in recent weeks, according to United States military officials, they have jammed the communications of smaller American drones and gunships such as the type used in the attack. A U.S. military convoy drives on a Syrian highway on September 29, 2017. One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture. The Kremlin said on Thursday it had no knowledge of the incident. Three Wagner Group mercenaries are alleged by Ukrainian prosecutors to have killed and tortured civilians near Kyiv in April 2022, alongside regular Russian troops. Nuzhin, 55, had been serving a 24-year prison sentence for a murder he committed in 1999 when he was freed in July and conscripted into Wagner, a notorious military group run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful Russian businessman and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. 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. Governments are almost endlessly prone to throwing good money after bad. 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. A handful of Marines ran ammunition to machine guns and Javelin missile launchers scattered along the berms and wedged among the trucks. By then, some of the American warplanes had returned to base, low on either fuel or ammunition. 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. With Russia suffering heavy losses, according to U.S. intelligence, Mr. Putin is sending battle-hardened reinforcements with experience into Ukraine, according to experts, including Jeremy Fleming, the director of Britains electronic surveillance agency. Vagner is one of the best-known of several Russian private military companies that have come into being over the past decade. Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors. But he denied that Russia's armed forces had any connection to the incident. Wagner Russian government forces in Syria maintain they were not involved in the battle. 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. A CAR radio station,Lengo Sengo, was also sanctioned on charges of spreading disinformation on Wagner's behalf. The group reportedly took its name from the nom de guerre of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a retired Russian military officer. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. Bouta is believed to have been killed in the spring of 2017, and a video of his death first emerged online in June 2017. New Report Exposes Brutal Methods of Russias Wagner Group, Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by, The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were, 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. 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. 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. The sudden hit on Russia's economic ties with the West since invading Ukraine has also prompted the country to step up its diplomatic drive in Africa. by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 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. A few of the commandos, including Air Force combat controllers, worked the radios to direct the next fleet of bombers flying toward the battlefield. Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent. New Report Exposes Brutal Methods of Russias Wagner Group. which was captured on video at the The United States troops on the ground, now roughly 40 in all, braced their defenses as the mercenaries left their vehicles and headed toward the outpost on foot. 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 The Guardian has previously reported that Prigozhin was personally recruiting soldiers from Russias extensive penitentiary system in an attempt to compensate for acute shortages of personnel on the battlefield. Journalist Ahmed Tayseer al-Issa, spent years documenting the conflict in Daraa and the crimes of the regime. And how might that be impacting the world? But Medvedev said he wasn't afraid. They cant say that this is just a political issue or propaganda because we are bringing this case in Russian courts, under Russian law. Delivered Monday-Saturday. The conflict is prolonged, involves heavy weaponry, civilians are impacted in a substantial way, human rights violations and war crimes increase substantially, and theres no access to justice for victims., https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/world/europe/wagner-group-russia-ukraine.html. He has reported for The New York Times in Moscowand has written for The Guardian, Politico, The New Republic, and Foreign Policy. Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by The private Russian military force, which has close ties to President Vladimir Putin and has been used in war zones across the world, Wagner has been reported as operating in a number of nations hit by conflict. It sheds new light on the networks operations and reveals how the killing became a rallying point for Russian ultranationalists online. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in Pretoria on Monday for talks with one of Moscow's most important allies in Africa. MatthewLuxmooreis a Moscow-based journalist covering Russia and the former Soviet Union. Asked whether the Kremlin is aware of accusations of potential war crimes allegedly committed by some of the Russian mercenary groups fighting in Syria, Peskov answered: "This is not a question for the presidential administration." Jessica Chen Weiss, formerly a senior advisor for policy planning at the State Department under the Biden administration, makes the case that the United States is becoming consumed by competition with China, a strategy that could lead to dangerous conflict. Their shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, observers say. 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