Ukraine: Nexus of Cognitive Warfare - Wagner Group
The BBC's take on Wagner Group. Certain? One of a kind?
Spoiler alert:
The BBC has let the cat out of the bag. Apparently there’s a Russian Private Military Corporation called “Wagner Group” and they aren’t nice. It’s got about 5000 employees and has been around for a few years. It might have done bad things but - depending upon who you are, what you think is bad, who may have been on the receiving end of the “things” (sharp, pointy, hot, cold, wet, rough etc) - it might have done “good” and/or necessary “things”. Although Wagner’s service brochure does not list plumbing, drains or dog walking. Opportunities for growth abound…
BBC News: What is Russia's Wagner Group of mercenaries in Ukraine?
BBC News is continuing its useful lay out of the Russian Wagner group. A parse of the language and consideration of equivalency with another similar group, combined with a check of what BBC has to say about this other group may be interesting.
The Wagner Group is a shadowy Russian mercenary organisation which has been active across the world.
Not the only one, though. “Shadowy” sounds extra bad. But we are talking about a Private Military Corporation (or similar) whose business is deadly force. They don’t tend to advertise in GQ and Cosmo. But PMCs can be found often in big arms fairs, and they are brightly lit affairs.
British military intelligence says 1,000 mercenaries from the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, are being deployed to eastern Ukraine.
So that’s Russian mercs that are outnumbered by the Russian’s claims of over 6000 foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, plus attached NATO nation forces from USA, UK, Canada, France and more supplying weapons and training for many years to the present day in to all the forces under the CIA-backed Ukrainian puppet governments of Poroschenko and Zelenskyy, which comprise Nazis. And the Russian’s were outnumbered militarily by around 3:1 or more at the start of their invasion/intervention/humanitarian operation/Special Military Operation.
A BBC investigation into the Wagner Group has pointed to the believed involvement of a 51-year-old former Russian army officer, Dmitri Utkin. He is thought to have founded Wagner and given it its name - his own former call-sign.
The Wagner Group first went into action during Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, says Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King's College London.
"Its mercenaries are thought to be some of the 'little green men' who occupied the region," she says. "About 1,000 of its mercenaries then supported the pro-Russian militias fighting for control of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
“Believe” and “thought” do not express certainty.
Mercenaries supporting a nation state’s activities in a foreign nation are longstanding. The most notable being the US Private Military Corporation Blackwater/Xe Services/Academii, which was started by Erik Prince and is now owned by private investors.
"Running a mercenary army is against the Russian constitution," she adds. "However, Wagner provides the government with a force which is deniable. Wagner can get involved abroad and the Kremlin can say: 'It has nothing to do with us'."
If the government was running an armed group of people, it would just be called “an army”.
Being deniable is a role provided by state Special Forces and anything you deny or keep secret. Standard ops for any mercenary organisation. See Blackwater in Iraq and onwards. Fauci has said that Covid and GoF was “nothing to do with us”, hasn’t he?
Samuel Ramani, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, says Wagner mainly recruits army veterans who need to pay off debts: "They come from rural areas where there are few other opportunities for them to make money."
How many employees of PMCs became mercs for economic reasons i.e. to be paid (more or something) for their military skills (compared to a job in an Amazon warehouse)? All of them, probably. How many had debts? Some of them, probably. If your car is on a monthly payment and you get a job with a PMC, you joined it to “pay off debts”.
[Slams head into table]
Some suggest Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, secretly funds and oversees the Wagner Group.
BBC doesn’t, in this piece, say who those “some” are. And these faceless “some” only “suggest”, they do not state with certainty or prove. That’s an anonymous source whispering anything the BBC can print with impunity because it will never be held to account, like most media around the world.
The piece goes on to link to Yevgeny Prigozhin, who it says is a controller or funder of the group. Prigozhin was placed under forms of US sanctions as a nefarious actor furthering his and Russian interests in the Central Africa Republic that include mining, security, and logistics.
In 2015 the Wagner Group started operating in Syria, fighting alongside pro-government forces and guarding oilfields.
So Wagner would have been employed by the Syrian government to fight and carry out asset protection. That’s coz they’re mercenaries, right?
Job vacancy: Mercenaries** wanted to fight people we don’t like. Apply direct to Mr Al-Assad/Mr Zelensky*
*Delete as appropriate (interpret “delete” as appropriate).
** Kill bonus available for deletions of your employer
It has been active in Libya since 2016, supporting the forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar. It's thought that up to 1,000 Wagner mercenaries took part in Haftar's advance on the official government in Tripoli in 2019.
I’m light on Libyan military personnel histories. A quick glance as CIApedia Wikipedia re Khalifa Haftar tells us that he is a Libyan-American who rose to become Gaddafi’s right-hand man then fell out of love with him:
Opposition from the United States
In March 1996, Haftar took part in a failed uprising against Gaddafi in the mountains of eastern Libya, before returning to the U.S.[33]
Haftar moved to suburban area outside Washington, D.C., living in Falls Church, Virginia until 2007. He then moved to Vienna, Virginia.[33][36] From there, and mostly through his close contacts within the DIA / CIA, he consistently supported several attempts to topple and assassinate Gaddafi.[37] He spelled his name "Hifter" in legal documents in the United States.[36]
So he’s an American-backed agent who has been actively involved in toppling Gaddafi, before then re-entering Libya’s political and military theatre with his eye on the big chair. And he’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty. He was the USA’s man (put back) on the ground after it took out Gaddafi. He’s been accused of multiple war crimes, including being filed against in the US. He has then been backed by Russians. And he’s also in control of a lot of oil.
So, it looks like he’s a flexible proxy who may be willing to work with whomever will help him achieve his goals. That support may include Wagner group. It seems to include the US military and/or US PMCs.
The Intercept has revealed that the FBI is investigating a failed 2019 mercenary plot related to the offensive led by Khalifa Haftar on Tripoli in Libya in April 2019, adding that the FBI has sought to determine what role, if any, private military contractor Erik Prince had in the undertaking, according to six people with knowledge of the investigation.
Prince, founder of notorious Blackwater, has denied any involvement in the undertaking, dubbed Project Opus, and told the New York Times that he had never met or spoken to Haftar. Prince’s attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said that his client had nothing to do with the mercenary plot.
Source: The Intercept/Libya Observer
A confidential report of the United Nations said the founder of US private military contractor, Blackwater, Erik Prince, violated UN arms embargo in Libya and tried to topple the Government of National Accord (GNA) twice in 2019.
The report seen by The New York Times said Prince, the former head of the security contractor Blackwater Worldwide and a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump, revealed how Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries, armed with attack aircraft, gunboats and cyberwarfare capabilities, to eastern Libya to help Khalifa Haftar at the height of the latter's aggression on Tripoli in 2019.
Source: Libya Observer
There’s Blackwater in the limelight, again. Or are they called something else now? Why would you change the name of your company?
Going back to the BBC on Wagner Group:
In 2017, the Wagner Group was invited into the Central African Republic (CAR) to guard diamond mines. It is also reported to be working in Sudan, guarding gold mines.
In 2020, the US Treasury said Wagner had been "acting as a cover" in these countries for Mr Prighozin's mining companies, such as M Invest and Lobaye Invest - and placed them under sanctions.
Most recently, the Wagner Group has been invited in by the government of Mali, in West Africa, to provide security against Islamic militant groups. Its arrival in 2021 influenced the decision by France to pull its troops out of the country.
Samuel Ramani says the Wagner Group has about 5,000 mercenaries in total operating across the world.
Mercs do merc work. Check.
What crimes is Wagner alleged to have committed?
The United Nations and the French government have accused Wagner mercenaries of committing rapes and robberies against civilians in the Central African Republic, and the EU has imposed sanctions on them for this.
In 2020, the United States military accused Wagner mercenaries of having planted landmines and other improvised explosive devices in and around the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
"Wagner Group's reckless use of landmines and booby traps are harming innocent civilians," said Rear Admiral Heidi Berg, director of intelligence at the US Army's Africa Command.
“Alleged to have committed”. Like probably Blackwater and General “Nice as pie” Haftar. There’s a vast number of alleged war criminals including large swathes of the US, UK and EU leadership and military forces. The funny thing about war crimes is they are pretty much impossible to prosecute anyone for because “international law” isn’t really a thing that gets enforced. The ICC should probably rent out office space to WeWork for a better ROI.
Using landmines is a technique in war. So are IEDs. That would make the Ukrainians bad soldiers, and the Taliban and any guerilla force in Iraq, who have all used this equipment and technique.
What is the Wagner Group doing in the current Ukraine war?
In the weeks leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it is thought Wagner Group mercenaries carried out "false flag" attacks in eastern Ukraine to give Russia a pretext for attacking, says Tracey German.
Now, messages have appeared on Russian social media recruiting mercenaries by inviting them to 'a picnic in Ukraine'.
However, the mercenary groups go by other names, such as The Hawks.
“Thought”. There’s that word again.
The BBC doesn’t tell us which false flag attacks they undertook. If you don’t know specifics about a false flag attack, how can you have any idea about who did it or why? I think my neighbour found someone else’s lost cat and returned it. I think that my neighbour stole the cat on a false flag basis in order to claim a reward. Although I don’t know who owned the cat, whether there was a cat (lost or not) and whether my neighbour exists (I don’t have neighbours). But I THINK my neighbour conducted a false cat operation. Please can all of you report my neighbour to your local cat protection society and the police and whoever you think should get on top of nefarious behaviour like this. Tell the BBC, they could do with the column inches.
Candace Rondeaux, professor of Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European studies at Arizona State University, says this may mark an attempt to steer away from the Wagner name because "the brand is tainted".
If Wagner Group needs help going through this process, they should employ Blackwater/Xe Services/Academii to walk them through the process having been through it twice themselves for tainting their own brand.
Former Blackwater firm renamed again
BBC: FBI to investigate Iraq shootout (11 civilians)
Wagner should consider a rebrand like Blackwater and change their name. “Salo” the traditional pork fat snack used to entice recruits to Ukraine is an option - Wagner/Salo.