The head of the Russian private army Wagner Group has decided to retire. On Saturday, he said he had captured “all military bases” in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

Upset by Yevgeny Prigozin’s announcement, President Putin described it as a “stab in the back” and spoke of punishing those who “betrayed” Russia.

A day before Prigozhin was to leave to march on Moscow, he said his goal was “not a military coup, but a march for justice” and his long-running war of words with Russian military top brass was about to change dramatically. .

The Wagner Group is a private mercenary army that has been fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Russian army in the Ukraine. According to one estimate, there are tens of thousands of Wagner Group fighters present there.

The group played a key role in the long and costly battle to capture the city of Bakhmut from the Ukrainian army.

The group calls itself a “private military company,” but the Russian government has recently taken steps that are seen as taking control of the group.

And on June 23, Prigozhin said that Russia’s justification for the war in Ukraine was a lie and a self-promoting excuse for Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

How important is the Wagner Group for Russia? Understand it in five points.

The Wagner Group (officially called PMC Wagner) was first identified in 2014 for helping pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

It was a secret organization at the time and was mainly active in Africa and the Middle East and is believed to have 5,000 fighters, most of them retired soldiers from Russia’s elite regiments and special forces.

Since then its size has increased considerably.

Last January, Britain’s Defense Ministry said: “Wagner controls around 50,000 fighters in Ukraine and has become a key figure in Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

According to the ministry, this organization started recruiting a large number of people in 2022 because Russia found it difficult to find people for recruitment into the regular army.

Earlier this year, the US National Security Council said that 80% of Wagner’s fighters were brought from prison.

Although employing mercenaries is illegal in Russia, the Wagner Group registered as a company in 2022 and opened its new headquarters in Saint Petersburg.

Dr Samuel Ramani, associated with the Royal United Service Institute think tank, says: “It is openly recruiting in Russian cities, posters and banners have been put up to promote it, and it has been described in the Russian media as a patriotic organization.”

The largest role of the Wagner Group was in the Russian occupation of the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s army says its fighters were sent in large numbers to attack, in which most were killed.

Initially, the Ministry of Defense did not mention that the Wagner Group was involved in the fighting. Although he later praised the “brave and selfless” role of his fighters.

How did the Wagner Group start?

According to a BBC investigation into the Wagner Group, it was initially said to involve a former Russian army officer, Dmitry Utkin.

A retired soldier from the Russian war in Chechnya, he is believed to have been Wagner’s first field commander and named the group after his old radio callsign.

The group is currently headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman known as “Putin’s chef” because he ran the Kremlin catering.

“One of the first operations of the Wagner Group was to assist Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014,” says Tracy Jarman, a professor of conflict and security at King’s College London.

A few weeks before the attack on Ukraine, it was understood that it was Wagner who carried out the attacks by planting the Ukrainian flag so that the Kremlin would get an excuse for the attack.

In recent months, Prigozhin has repeatedly accused Defense Minister Shoigu and Ukrainian Military Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimo of “incompetence and deliberately insufficient supply of weapons to the Wagner unit stationed in Ukraine.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has now said that volunteer fighters in Ukraine will have to sign contracts with it by the end of June.

Although the name of the Wagner Group was not mentioned in this announcement, the move was seen as an attempt to establish government control over the group.

Prigozhin was furious and issued a statement announcing that his fighters would boycott the contract.

Since 2015, Wagner Group fighters have been working in Syria to help pro-government security forces and protect oil wells.

Fighters from the Wagner Group are also in Libya, where they are helping security forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

The Central African Republic (CAR) has invited the Wagner Group to protect diamond mines and is believed to be protecting a gold mine in Sudan.

In West Africa, the Mali government is using the Wagner Group against Islamic extremist groups.

It is believed that Prigozhin is making money on these shares of the Wagner Group.

The US Treasury Department says they use their presence to make their own mining companies more prosperous, and the department has banned them.

Last January, a former commander applied for asylum in Norway after leaving the Wagner Group. He claimed that he had witnessed war crimes in Ukraine with his own eyes.

Ukrainian prosecutors charged three Wagner Group fighters with torturing and killing civilians near kyiv in April 2021 while fighting alongside regular forces.

Germany’s intelligence agency says Wagner fighters may have carried out mass murders of civilians in Bucha in March 2022.

The United Nations and the French government accused members of the Wagner Group of raping and looting civilians in the Central African Republic.

In 2020, the US military accused Wagner fighters of planting land mines and identifications inside and outside the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

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