Russian mercenaries tasked with assassinating the Ukrainian president?

WAGNER. Deployed in Ukraine for several weeks, the mercenaries of the private paramilitary group Wagner would be 400 to have reached the capital Kiev, with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the sights. What is the real power of this group?

Founded in 2014, Wagner is the first Russian private military company (PMC) in the Middle East. From 250 fighters at its beginnings, it had 2500 in 2020 for 5000 today, the figure varying according to the most informed sources. Already 8 years ago, his close ties with the regular Russian army were not in doubt, as stated by a a note from the French Institute of International Relations. In fact, its founder, the former member of the Russian special forces Dimitri Outkin, was decorated by Vladimir Putin in 2016. Mr Outkin, who has also chosen to use a somewhat special code name: that of the composer Wagner, idol of Hitler. A way for this small group to associate itself indirectly with the warrior dimension of the Third Reich. Which says a lot about this band the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suspected in March 2021 of being behind “mass executions, arbitrary detentions (…) and growing attacks on humanitarian actors”. Recently, it was the European Union that spoke out accusing the Wagner Group of sending private military agents into conflict zones to fuel violence, loot natural resources and intimidate civilians. All this in “violation of international human rights law”, specifies press release from last december.

The link with Mr Putin is not limited to this friendship: funding is also at stake, in particular that of the Russian oligarch Evgueni Prigojine, very close to the Kremlin for having been its official caterer. Additionally, logistical and military ties between the two abound, with the group’s training taking place at a military base belonging to the Russian Armed Forces. Finally, the commitment in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly on the financial markets, has definitively endorsed this role of unofficial relay between Russia and the local States.

Advantageous for Moscow

Wagner, as a Russian PMC, is beneficial to Moscow because it allows it to resort to “plausible deniability” in order to challenge its involvement in conflicts that go beyond Russian borders, and thus to rid itself of any responsibility for the possible abuses on the ground. This denial is possible thanks to the lack of legal existence of the group, which, if not registered as a commercial company, can only be defined as a nebula or an informal entity, as the researcher Emmanuel Dreyfus pointed out in a interview for the Institut Montaigne.

Ignoring Western calls to order, the group’s semi-official prerogatives have expanded over the years: in addition to training, intelligence and security missions, it now participates, according to West Franceto offensive actions, always aligned with the wishes of Russian power.

The zeal of Volodymyr Zelensky as a bulwark against the Russian offensive

At a time when Vladimir Putin calls on the Ukrainian soldiers to rebel against a government which he describes as a “gang of Nazis and drug addicts” in a video published on February 24, 2022 on the website of the Russian presidency, the assassination of Ukrainian president becomes a serious probability.

Wagner would, according to the revelations of the Times, brings in mercenaries from Africa with the mission of overthrowing the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, in exchange for a large financial reward. It is mentioned in the newspaper the hypothesis of a sponsored assassination. When the Ukrainian government learned of the objective of this mission, it declared a 36-hour curfew this Saturday, February 26, determined that the Ukrainian police comb the city in search of these hitmen .

However, it seems difficult to dislodge Volodymyr Zelensky, more reckless than ever, who replied to the Americans proposing to exfiltrate him from Kiev by: “this is where the fight is, I need ammunition, not a taxi “, according to a senior American intelligence official (info relegated by The New Tribune). It is with the same stubbornness that he asked to join the European Union during a videoconference with the European Parliament this Tuesday noon, even launching, in a last hope: “Don’t let us go! Prove to us that you are European!”. Ukraine’s official application for membership of the European Union had also been signed the day before, Monday evening March 28th.