When militias from the feared Wagner Group took refuge in Belarus after last month’s failed insurrection against the Kremlin, dozens of other mercenary groups were ready to take their place in the Ukrainian conflict.
According to reports, mercenaries from Redut, Slavic Corps and ENOT, amongst dozens of others, have already been spotted during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began last 12 months.
Mercenaries from Redut, also often called Redut-anti-terror they are amongst the most outstanding and were amongst the first to enter the conflict in Ukraine, according to Russian press reports.
The group, whose Russian-language name means “Redoubt”, operated in Syria, where soldiers were involved in protecting the facilities of a construction conglomerate controlled by Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko.
According to the Kharkiv Group for the Protection of Human Rights, some of the group’s mercenaries, recruited on Russian social media platforms, were convicted of war crimes during the invasion.
Last week, a court in Ukraine sentenced three Redutas mercenaries, including Belarusian soldier Maksym Ziaziulczyk, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Ziaziulczyk, 22, said he traveled to the central Russian city of Tambov to register with Redut for a salary of $3,400 a month, paid in US dollars.
Human Rights in Ukraine, a non-profit organization that documents war crimes in the country, said that although Redut is controlled by the Russian defense ministry, the salaries come from oligarchs linked to Russian leader Valdimir Putin.
“Even when … Redut is affiliated with … or controlled by the Russian Ministry of Defense, there is no such thing as a doubt that somebody very wealthy is paying for these mercenaries,” the statement reads. Human Rights Ukraine website earlier this week.
Other Russian conglomerates, corresponding to Lukoil and Gazprom, even have their very own security forces, originally intended to protect their oil fields and other facilities in the region and beyond. Soldiers from Potok, a mercenary group linked to energy company Gazprom, complained last 12 months about battlefield conditions in Ukraine. Radio Free Europe.
The ENOT group, Russian abbreviation for United People’s Communal Partnerships, was established in 2011 to organize militias in the Donbass region of Ukraine. The group can be lively in Syria, and since 2015 it has been training its forces in camps in Serbia.
Child soldiers from Russia, Montenegro and Serbia are also used. In 2018, ENOT training camps in Serbia, which were run by veterans of the Bosnian War, were closed due to accusations of child abuse. Reports from the Balkans.
Despite the proliferation of other paramilitary groups fighting in Ukraine, the Wagner Group stays powerful.
The group was founded in 2014 by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian army special forces officer and member of the Slavic Corps, a personal military contractor who operated during the Syrian civil war.
The soldiers, who were recruited in St. Petersburg by the Moran Security Group, were used to defend government installations in Syria. Russian press reports.
Even after Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny against Putin last month, the Wagner Group stays Russia’s dominant mercenary fighting force, said Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born intelligence expert and writer of Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America.
“The Wagner group has not lost momentum, but relatively is moving to Belarus,” Koffler told The Post on Tuesday, adding that Prigozhin’s forces are establishing training camps at a disused military base that Putin’s ally Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, offered them.
Koffler believes that the June 24 coup attempt was a “false flag operation” that allowed Putin to further consolidate power. Over 25,000 Wagner Group forces entered Rostov-on-Don, causing 24-hour chaos as Prigozhin threatened to rise and march on Moscow.
Putin accused his former ally of treason and called the insurrection “a stab in the back of our country.” But at the end of the day, Prigozhin ordered his men back to base.
“The West has fallen for the narrative that Putin is weak and that’s what he wants,” Koffler said. “In reality, Putin has arrange a strategic reserve of Wagner’s combat-ready units, Putin’s best fighting force, 140 miles from Ukraine’s northern border, in preparation for opening a second front.”
Despite the controversy between Putin and Prigozhin, who returned from exile to thank his fighters for his or her “Justice March” in Tuesday’s audio message, the two remain strong allies, Koffler said.
“In reality, Prigozhin is one of the most murderous characters in the world,” she said. “He remains to be a 100% ally of Putin, very loyal. Putin has never condemned it. Washington and the West have all the time misread Putin. And that may be very dangerous.”