Putin’s Wagner Group decimated – Seeking mercenaries from Europe to… Latin America

Because of the losses it has suffered in Ukraine, the private military company Wagner has stepped up its efforts to recruit mercenaries in Turkey, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Moldova, Canada and Latin American countries, as the London-based Middle East Eye website wrote yesterday (in its article entitled : Wagner Group lures foreign mercenaries with bumped-up salaries as Russia suffers losses), citing intelligence sources.

According to the information available to the website, this paramilitary organization has heavy losses in Ukraine due to the “disorganization of the Russian army”. The mercenary recruitment campaign, according to the website, is underway through the Russian oligarchs who live in Europe and their mediators, who have contacts with local groups from the field of organized crime.

Foreign mercenaries, according to information from Middle East Eye, are lured with very high fees, offering them a monthly salary of 10,000 dollars. Before the war in Ukraine the wages of mercenaries ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 dollars monthly, the site points out. One of Middle East Eye’s sources says that Wagner “usually recruits people with serious military experience,” but now the paramilitary organization is ready to recruit those “who are ready to kill and need money.”

ISW: Wagner’s mercenaries they can use Telegram app for recruitment

On the eve of the publication, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused the private military company Wagner of exploiting the natural resources of the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and other regions to finance “Moscow’s military machine” in Ukraine . The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) drew attention to the fact that Wagner created a channel on the messaging app Telegram, which its analysts point out can be used, among other things, as a recruiting tool.

In September the website SOTA reported that the Wagner company is forcibly recruiting prisoners in Russian prisons to send them to the war in Ukraine, promising money and amnesty after they serve six months at the front. The human rights activist and founder of the organization “Russia Sitting” Olga Romanova stated in an interview with DW that in a number of cases the prisoners in the prisons are personally recruited by the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Wagner’s mercenaries have for years been believed to be secretly involved in various armed conflicts with the support of the Kremlin. Moscow has always denied any ties to private paramilitary organizations. At the same time, Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is considered to have close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, admitted at the end of September that he is the one who founded Wagner. As he stated, he founded this paramilitary organization in May 2014 to support the Donbas separatists in eastern Ukraine.

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