According to the Times, the Russian army does not operate alone on Ukrainian territory. The British newspaper revealed on Monday that 400 men from the Wagner force have been present in Ukraine for five weeks.
The Wagner Group is a paramilitary militia funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigojine, a close associate of Vladimir Putin. For the Russian army, the interest of this group of mercenaries is that it can carry out missions for which the official army would not wish to take responsibility.
The Times claims that 400 men from this group joined Ukraine five weeks ago with the main mission of bringing down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Informed of this mission on Saturday morning, the Ukrainian government therefore added a 36-hour curfew by informing civilians that anyone who braved it would be considered a Kremlin agent and would be shot. The curfew has since been lifted on Monday morning at 8 a.m. local time.
Group accused of fueling violence and plundering resources by EU
According to Europe 1, no French have been identified by the intelligence services in the ranks of Wagner. According to the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), the group was created in 2014 during the conflict in Crimea and Donbass. Ifri had 2,500 men in the ranks of this militia at the end of 2020, compared to 250 when it was created. It is estimated that 10,000 mercenaries have already taken part in the group’s activities over the past seven years.
Already in December 2021, the European Union warned of the actions of the Wagner group, accusing it of having “recruited, trained and sent private military agents to conflict zones around the world in order to fuel violence, to loot natural resources and to intimidate civilians in violation of international law, including international human rights law” in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and the Central African Republic.