NEW YORK.– Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched an offensive to gain full control of the private Wagner mercenary group, whose operations in the Middle East and Africa are supported by the Kremlin, after the rebellion of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has gone into exile in Belarus, was put down, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The New York newspaper assured that after the mercenary rebellion failed, Putin launched a diplomatic offensive in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali and other countries in which they operate, to assure their authorities that the Wagner Group will continue to function normally in them. but it will no longer do so independently but managed by the Kremlin.
Thus, the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Vershinin, flew to Damascus to personally deliver a message to that effect to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, other senior officials from his ministry telephoned the president of the Central African Republic, Faustin Archange Touadéra, who pays to have Wagner mercenaries in his personal guard, and a mission from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations was also sent to Mali.
Moscow has given Wagner’s men who participated in the rebellion until next Saturday to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense or demobilize, but Prigozhin, who has not said whether he intends to maintain control of the mercenary operations since his exile in Belarus, has repeatedly said his men will reject the contracts.
For years, the Kremlin denied any relationship with Wagner, a group estimated to employ more than 30,000 fighters, and with which Moscow has managed to amass great international influence, especially in Africa, and raise revenue.
However, Putin acknowledged on Tuesday that the group had been financed by the Russian state for at least a year, according to the newspaper.
Wagner generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Africa, a crucial source of funding for both maintaining Russia’s influence on the continent and financing operations in Ukraine, according to Western officials quoted by The Wall Street Journal.
For years, the group has worked as a security force for autocratic regimes in the Middle East and Africa and, more recently, has crept up on Latin America, where it has offered its services to Haiti and Venezuela to help maintain control over security groups. organized crime or political opposition.
