DailyExpertNews
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Recently downgraded U.S. intelligence officials suggest the Russian mercenary group Wagner has taken on greater clout, recruiting convicts — including some with serious medical conditions — from prisons to complement the Moscow flagship.
The group recently took delivery of weapons from North Korea, a top US official said, a sign of its growing role in the war in Ukraine.
And the US believes Wagner could become embroiled in a power struggle with the Russian military itself as it attempts to influence the Kremlin.
“In certain cases, Russian military officials are effectively subordinate to Wagner’s command,” said John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator at the National Security Council. “It is quite clear to us that Wagner is emerging as a rival center of power for the Russian military and other Russian ministries.”
The revelations about the Wagner group came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s historic visit to Washington, where he thanked the United States for its military assistance and said more was needed to repel the Russian advance.
Wagner has emerged as a key player in the 10-month conflict. The group is often described as President Vladimir Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its global presence since its inception in 2014 and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.
On Wednesday, the US applied new restrictions to Wagner’s access to technology exports.
Kirby said the US estimates Wagner currently has about 50,000 personnel deployed to Ukraine, 40,000 of which may be convicts recruited from Russian prisons. He said the group spends $100 million a month to fund its activities in Ukraine.
The group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has even personally traveled to Russian prisons to recruit convicts himself to go to the front and fight. Some of them suffer from “serious medical conditions,” Kirby said.
“It seems that Mr. Prigozhin is ready to just throw Russian bodies into the meat grinder in Bakhmut. In fact, about 1,000 Wagner fighters have been killed in the fighting in recent weeks, and we think 90% of those 1,000 fighters were in fact convicts,” Kirby said.
Prigozhin, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s chef,” already has close ties to the Russian president. But Kirby suggested that he was working to strengthen those ties through his efforts to bolster the Russian armed forces through his recruiting of mercenaries.
“It’s all about how good he looks with Mr. Putin, and how well he is appreciated in the Kremlin,” he said. “In fact, we would go so far as to say that his influence is expanding.”
Last month, Wagner received a delivery of infantry missiles and missiles from North Korea, Kirby said, indicative of how Russia and its military partners continue to explore ways to circumvent Western sanctions and export controls.
Wagner, not the Russian government, paid for the equipment. The US does not believe it will significantly change battlefield dynamics in Ukraine, but suggested that North Korea may be planning to provide more material.
Prigozhin said Thursday that Kirby’s claims that his group has taken arms shipments from North Korea “are nothing more than gossip and speculation.”
“Everyone knows that it has been a long time since North Korea has supplied weapons to the Russian Federation,” Prigozhin said in a statement on his Telegram channel. “And no other such attempts have even been made. Therefore, these arms shipments from the DPRK are nothing more than gossip and speculation.”