(Updated with reaction from Evguéni Prigojine)
ROME, March 13 (Reuters) – The Italian government has said the Russian paramilitary group Wagner was behind the rise in the number of migrant boats trying to cross the central Mediterranean, as part of a Moscow strategy aimed at revenge against the countries supporting Ukraine.
“I think it is now possible to affirm that the exponential increase in the migratory phenomenon departing from the African coasts is also part, in no small measure, of a clear strategy of hybrid warfare that the Wagner division is in the process of to implement, using its considerable weight in some African countries,” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said in a statement.
Some 20,000 people have arrived in Italy since the start of the year, compared to 6,100 in the same period in 2022, according to Interior Ministry figures, and the immigration issue is mounting pressure on the government of right.
In a voicemail message posted to his Telegram account, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigojine replied: “We have no idea what’s going on with the migrant crisis, we don’t care about it.”
He then uttered a series of obscenities to describe Guido Crosetto and urged him to take an interest in his own country.
Guido Crosetto, a prominent member of Italian Council President Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party, has called on NATO allies to help Italy deal with the surge in arrivals of immigrants.
“The Atlantic Alliance becomes stronger if the problems arising from collective choices are equally shared, but it runs the risk of cracking if the countries most exposed to reprisals of all kinds are left alone,” he said. .
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani made similar remarks during a visit to Israel, telling the ANSA news agency that it was worrying that many migrants came from areas ‘controlled by the Wagner Group’. .
(Report Angelo Amante, French version Augustin Turpin, edited by Kate Entringer)
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