CENTRAL NEWS
It is known that all the chaos of the Middle East and North Africa is a strategical boardgame of interests for hegemons such as Russia. What remains unknown is how Russia manages to spark price-tagged wars with very little official intervention. And at this point we came across the infamous Wagner Group, Putin’s very own ISIS.
The Russian firm Wagner Group, is a shadowy gang of mercenaries waging secret wars on the Kremlin’s behalf from Ukraine to Syria.
Born out of a need for plausible deniability in Moscow’s military operations abroad, Wagner contractors were at the forefront of some of the heaviest fighting in eastern Ukraine and Syria in recent years before exploding into the headlines with their battle against U.S. forces in Syria in February 2018.
Wagner seemed to herald a new reality, one in which it would form the spearhead of an aggressive new Russian policy abroad as deniable forces who can lose their lives in numbers with little or no domestic comeback, because they were never officially there.
Wagner’s presence, not just in Libya but in other parts of Africa, was revealed in June by the exiled Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Documents and emails were shared by Prigozhin’s staff which outlined plans to put Russia back on the map in 13 African states from South Africa and Zimbabwe to Libya. All that remains on the internet in regards to the reveal is an error page on the Guardian website.
In an article, The New York Times drew attention to the presence of Russian snipers on the frontline outside Tripoli “using bullets that never exit the body and kill instantly.” Yet, Russia was never there.
Then, a video surfaced in June 2017 showing four Russian-speaking men torturing, stabbing and beheading a Syrian man in 2017. Obtained by Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, the footage shows a man being beaten with a sledgehammer and decapitated with a spade before being strung up by his legs and his body set on fire.
Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladmir Putin’s spokesman, said he had not seen the footage, but added: “I am certain that this has no relation to Russian military operations in Syria.”
