What is known about Wagner Group and recruitment in Serbia?

What is known about Wagner Group and recruitment in Serbia

WASHINGTON – The United States announced on Friday that it would impose new sanctions on the Wagner Group next week and would also designate it as a transnational criminal organization. This will freeze all assets of the Russian private military company in America and ban Americans from doing business with it.

“We encourage other countries to help us address the Wagner Group’s ability to commit atrocities around the world. This is not just about preventing atrocities in Ukraine, but around the world,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Washington’s latest decision.

The activities of the Wagner Group have once again come to the attention of the global public following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its attempts to recruit mercenaries, including in Serbia, have worried the US.

State Department adviser Derek Chollet, during a recent visit to Belgrade and a meeting with President Aleksandar Vucic, drew attention to the problem of recruitment of “Wagner’s” in Serbia.

“We have seen that the Wagner group is trying to recruit soldiers from Serbia and elsewhere. We think this is unsustainable”, Šole told reporters after his talks with Vucic.

“I don’t know if there are any concerns in Serbia about this, we have discussed concerns. We will work with the authorities here in Belgrade and elsewhere where Wagner is active to put an end to their activities,” Chollet said.

Asked what information he had about Wagner’s activities and recruitment in Serbia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar did not give specific examples in an interview with Voice of America – during a visit to Belgrade – but recalled Chollet’s statement.

“Derek Chollet said it best. He said that Wagner has a very malign influence all over the world. It is bad for any country to do that. It is illegal here. The Serbian government is clear about this, as is ours. If anything, it must be stopped and the government should prosecute it. We have their determination to do that. This is good,” Eskobar stressed.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, in an interview with local media, condemned Wagner’s ad about recruitment that was published and then withdrawn from the Serbian-language portal “Russia Today Balkans”, and denied that there were “Wagners” on the barricades erected in northern Kosovo in December last year by Serbs.

Prigozhin himself, responding to questions from Voice of America on the Telegram channel, denied any Wagner contacts with Serbia, while on Friday, according to Reuters, he claimed he was not “recruiting Serbs” to fight in Ukraine. We have not received any replies from the Ministry of the Interior regarding their knowledge of recruitment in Serbia.

But Serbian citizens have been recruited for the Wagner group for years, Candice Rondou, director of the Future Frontlines project at the Washington think tank New America, which has been researching Wagner for years, told Voice of America.

“It’s important to bear in mind that a lot of this is based on social media data, data that someone has personally presented, but we have done a lot of checking to see if it reflects the reality of the situation. And we see a very large number of Serbian recruiters, or at least people who say they are involved. In the 1990s, we see veterans of the war in the Balkans, which is actually a common thing. Interestingly, there were also conscripts from Germany, some from Poland,” says Rondou, who did not specify to which countries the Serbian nationals – members of Wagner’s group – were deployed.

Rondou, who is also a professor at Arizona State University, points out that the ranks of the Wagner Group include Russian veterans of many wars and former members of the Russian special forces.

“Predatory recruitment and cannon fodder”

Wagner’s recruitment of thousands, often in conflict and post-conflict zones, is of particular concern to the United Nations working group dealing with the use of mercenaries as a means of human rights violations, which operates under the mandate of the World Human Rights Council. A member of the group, University of Copenhagen professor Sorha MacLeod, calls the recruitment of “Wagners” predatory for VOA.

“In some cases, coercion and threats are used against family members to get people to fight for Wagner. This is worrying because it is essentially human trafficking into mercenaries. We have also seen the recruitment of former Islamic State fighters,” says McLeod, who focuses her research on international human rights law on private military and security companies and the privatisation of armed conflict.

The Wagner Group was reportedly activated in 2014 – after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula – and its mercenaries have taken part in conflicts and military operations in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

Since the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, they have played a prominent role on the Ukrainian battlefield – notably in the battles for the eastern towns of Soledar and Bakhmut. The White House estimates that around 50,000 Wagner’s are fighting in Ukraine.

Prigozhin – known as Putin’s chef because of his lucrative catering business – only admitted to being a founder in September last year, after previously denying it. In recent months, he has spoken openly about the Wagner operations in Ukraine, and analysts assess that he is strengthening his influence in Russia.

US experts describe the Wagner group as a network of several companies, financial intermediaries and offshore companies, or as a “cartel of state-owned companies with their own paramilitary forces”.

Katrina Docksey of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies explains to Voice of America that the Wagner Group operates with the acquiescence of the Kremlin, often working with the Ministry of Defence and intelligence services and pursuing Russian state interests under the guise of a private entity. .

However, according to new information from US intelligence, tensions between Wagner and the Russian Ministry of Defence are rising, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly relying on mercenaries from the group for operations in Ukraine.

“Technically, on paper, the Wagner Group or other private military companies do not exist in Russia. Therefore, they can be used for riskier missions, especially on the front lines, or for missions for which Russia does not want to be held accountable if human rights are violated on a large scale, or for those where Russia would rather use mercenaries as cannon fodder than risk the lives of Russian soldiers,” Doksi points out.

Docksey, who has researched the activities of the “Wagners” in sub-Saharan Africa, sees their possible increased presence in countries like Serbia or, earlier, Belarus as part of an attempt to quell any anti-Russian sentiment.

“An attempt to essentially smooth diplomatic relations and public opinion in order to meet Russian objectives and maintain a strong position. Given the events in Ukraine, especially the fact that the war is not going according to Vladimir Putin’s plans, preserving their (Russia’s) image and relations with nearby countries has become more important than ever as they try to save face and find ways to sustain their efforts in Ukraine and across the region in the years to come.

In Serbia, some far-right organisations are linked to Wagner. Candice Rondou also points to the deep links between this Russian mercenary group and the movement for the restoration of Imperial Russia.

“The Russian imperialist movement wants the restoration of a kind of tsarist ruling structure, it wants the monarchical, Orthodox Christian approach to life that prevailed in the 19th century, before the Bolshevik Revolution. And they are spreading this all over Europe, including in Serbia, where the Orthodox tradition is very strong. And in that sense there is a lot of overlap, a lot of cultural ties between Russia and Serbia.”

“Serious crimes in countries where there are ‘Wagner’s'”

Whatever the reasons for the presence of Wagner’s in a country – military, geopolitical or economic – accusations of violence and crimes inevitably follow.

“We have seen that the Wagner group has been involved in a series of armed conflicts. They are extremely violent and responsible for serious human rights violations. The civilian population suffers enormously from the violence they perpetrate. We have received information that they have engaged in mass killings, torture, disappearances, arrests, sexual and gender-based violence, pillaging and random attacks on civilians, which essentially amount to war crimes,” says Sorha MacLeod, UN expert.

Last September, Candice Rondou visited Ukraine, where members of the Wagner Group were accused of war crimes.

“I visited Buche, Irpin, Kiev, Motazhin – another place where war crimes were allegedly committed. I heard from officials and eyewitnesses about the connection of the Wagner group to war crimes in the initial phase of the Russian invasion. I spoke to an official in Irpin who described apocalyptic scenes of dogs eating corpses while members of the Wagner group and other Russian soldiers targeted residents trying to cross the street.”

Sanctions and impunity

Prigozhin and his Wagner Group are under US and European sanctions, and the Russian oligarch was indicted in the US in 2018 on charges of meddling in the US elections, to which he has admitted.

“We have already seen that the US has started to be more active in terms of financial penalties and sanctions to somewhat reduce the profitability of the group and the oligarchs and other leaders linked to it. But more broadly, we should be pushing for transparency, and countries seeking to partner with Wagner should know what the real implications of this are,” stresses Katrina Docksey.

Sorha McLeod draws attention to the problem of impunity for crimes committed by Wagner mercenaries, as they are difficult to identify. She sees a possible solution in universal jurisdiction for the most serious crimes, as well as in prosecuting Wagner Group members before the International Criminal Court.

“But the most effective way is to support states at national level and ensure that their judiciaries are strong enough to prosecute and, where appropriate, convict and punish those responsible for human rights violations. This is key to ensuring justice for victims,” McLeod concludes./VOA/