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TOPIC: wagner group

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Battle Of Bakhmut, Why It Means More To Russia

Heavy fighting continues in Bakhmut, as Russia steps up efforts to take the besieged eastern Ukrainian city. But there is a subplot taking place between competing Russian factions that are forcing all sides to double down. And there are many more battles to come.

-Analysis-

In a war that lasts as long as the one now happening in Ukraine, some battles take on a dimension beyond their actual importance in the course of the conflict. The battle that has been going on for months in Bakhmut, an eastern Ukraine city now in ruins, is one.

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Capturing Bakhmut and forcing Ukrainian defenders to withdraw, which Moscow has clearly announced as its next target, has become more of a symbolic objective than a strategic one.

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Zelensky Asks For Wings, Pyongyang Nuclear Parade, Disney Good And Bad News

👋 Oraire ota*

Welcome to Thursday, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lands in Brussels to address European leaders, North Korea parades intercontinental ballistic missiles in Pyongyang, and there’s good news if you like Disney movies (less so if you work there). Meanwhile, we look at why it’s becoming difficult for close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin to get new mercenaries to sign up for his Wagner paramilitary Group.

[*Nkore, Uganda]

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Freedom Or Death? Wagner Group Struggles To Recruit New Prisoners For Russia's War

Many of the convicts that the Wagner Group mercenary outfit enlisted to fight in Ukraine are dead or missing, which has created a major recruitment problem for the paramilitary group headed by Putin confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Back in September, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private paramilitary Wagner Group, promised a full pardon to any Russian prisoners who agreed to fight in Ukraine. It was a critical recruitment tool to bolster Vladimir Putin's announcement at the time of a "partial" mobilization of new troops.

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Then in January, the first group of convicts, who had supposedly “fulfilled their contracts” with Wagner, had all past criminal charges erased from their record.

Yet now, amid fears of a new wave of Russian mobilization, convicts in Russian penal colonies who are refusing to go to the front line are being threatened with new criminal cases and sentences, Russian independent news site Agenstvo reports.

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The Poroshenko Plan: 7 Ways To Truly Crush Russia's Economy

Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian businessman and politician, who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, believes more can be done to defeat Putin, by truly crippling the Russian economy:

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries have pummeled the Russian market and its richest oligarchs with sanctions after sanctions. Despite this, preliminary data from the World Bank shows Russia’s GDP only decreased by 3.5% last year.

Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian businessman and politician, who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, believes more can be done. Here, he reveals his seven point plan to cripple Putin and the Russian economy:

-OpEd-

KYIV — Ukraine can win a war it did not start and force Russia, the aggressor, to bear international responsibility.

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This will be our joint victory with all the democratic countries of the world.

Fierce battles continue, like those in Bakhmut, and Ukrainian heroes are dying. Civilians, too, continue to perish - from Bucha in March last year, to Dnipro in January.

Russia has begun a new offensive, preparing to avenge the failures of its military campaign which in just under a year has not achieved any (!) of the goals Russia laid out prior to the invasion.

Late last month, the Russian dictator made a number of statements regarding the Kremlin's plans.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Now Or Never? The Five Reasons Putin Is Moving Up His “Spring Offensive” To February

The Russian army is fighting fiercely for every kilometer in the Donbas, amid reports of new masses of troops arriving in Ukraine. By most accounts, it looks like Putin has moved up the calendar on a major assault that was originally planned after the winter thaw.

-Analysis-

As February began, fierce battles were raging in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine, with elite units of the Russian army and fighters from the Wagner Group mercenary outfit engaged in the action.

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More Russian troops and equipment from all quarters are descending toward a widening front line, all overseen by General Valery Gerasimov, a veteran of the Russian military, who is now commanding both regular defense department battalions and the Wagner soldiers. Gerasimov took over last month, appointed by President Vladimir Putin who was apparently dissatisfied with three previous top commanders of the war.

Taken together, these and other signs from the past week appear to point to Russia launching a major offensive on Ukraine — now. Russia increased the number of missile launchers in the Black Sea with 16 "Kalibr" salvos. In the Luhansk region, they continue to conduct offensive actions in the Lyman and Bakhmut directions. Some reports say the attack will match in breadth and intensity the initial invasion last February.

If confirmed, this imminent Russian assault would be a significant acceleration on the battlefield calendar, after most had been expecting Putin to launch the attack in the spring. Why has Moscow changed its mind?

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Wagner's MIA Convicts: Where Do Deserting Russian Mercenaries Go?

Tens of thousands of Russian prisoners who've been recruited by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit have escaped from the frontlines after volunteering in exchange for freedom. Some appear to be seeking political asylum in Europe thanks to a "cleared" criminal record.

Of the about 50,000 Russian convicts who signed up to fight in Ukraine with the Wagner Group, just 10,000 are reportedly still at the front. An unknown number have been killed in action — but among those would-be casualties are also a certain number of coffins that are actually empty.

To hide the number of soldiers who have deserted or defected to Ukraine, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is reportedly adding them to the lists of the dead and missing.

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Some Wagner fighters have surrendered through the Ukrainian government's "I Want To Live" hotline, says Olga Romanova, director and founder of the Russia Behind Bars foundation.

"Relatives of the convicts enlisted in the Wagner Group are not allowed to open the coffins," explains Romanova.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Roman Anin

Inside Russia's "Game Of Thrones" To Succeed Putin

As Vladimir Putin's end increasingly seems near (political or physical), the battle to replace the Kremlin strongman heats up. Here are the main characters in this very Russian blood sport.

Today, Russia deservedly ranks among the most isolated and inhuman regimes in the world. And it's not just because of the war — this is the result of two decades of political and moral degradation of the Russian state.

The clans surrounding Vladimir Putin today resemble organized crime groups.

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Some of them command their own armies, like Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and the head of the Rosgvardia, Viktor Zolotov. Others, like Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Security Council, have security units.

And each clan has its financial resources — banks, state corporations and large companies. Some clans own entire regions, like Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

Why Putin's Choice For New Ukraine Commander Is All About Closing Ranks At Home

The choice of General Valery Gerasimov to replace General Sergey Surovikin is a political defeat for Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov — and a sign that Putin may be getting skittish on the home front.

-Analysis-

Vladimir Putin has once again replaced his supreme military commander in Ukraine, just three months after a previous change at the top. The announcement Wednesday is clearly a sign of Putin's disappointment in the direction of the war – but perhaps more notably, a major political victory for the military establishment over outsiders who had been trying to gain influence.

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Putin’s choice of General Valery Gerasimov to replace General Sergey Surovikin is not expected to affect the immediate course of the war, but it speaks to a change in the Russian president’s mindset. Unsatisfied with the Wagner PMC mercenary group, and its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, recently tasked with a bigger share of the fighting, Putin has decided to rely on the established military elite again.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Pierre Haski

Blood Of Bakhmut: Why Both Sides Are Ready To Die For A Deserted City In Donbas

Fighting has been fierce for the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. What is the price of a victory that is, above all, symbolic?

-Analysis-

PARIS — The name of Bakhmut will go down in history as one the fiercest, most contested battles in the Ukraine war. Fighting has been raging for weeks, in this city of the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine's Donbas. The toll of victims is rising considerably.

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What’s at stake today is less strategic than symbolic — which is not a trifling thing in this type of conflict. There is something about Bakhmut that’s reminiscent of World War I, where men die to conquer a house or a neighborhood only to lose it again the next day. The weapons, of course, differ: 21st-century drones, geo-location, missiles.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Cameron Manley

Wagner Boss: First Group Of Russian Prisoners Recruited For War Are Now Free

The Russian public is worried that waves of battle-hardened convicted murderers and rapists will soon be roaming the streets.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private Wagner paramilitary group and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, made news last September by confirming that he was recruiting from Russian prisons to join his troops in Ukraine.

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Part of the offer to prisoners: in exchange for fighting in the war, you will earn permanent freedom. On Thursday, Prigozhin told Russian state media agency RIA Novosti that the first group of prisoners had “received a full pardon.”

“They fulfilled their contract with honor, with dignity, one of the first… The first,” he said. “They worked the way few people work.”

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Laure Gautherin, Bertrand Hauger and Anne-Sophie Goninet

Russia Blames Attack On Phones, U.S. House In Limbo, 25 °C In Bilbao

👋 ሰላም*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Moscow blames its soldiers for using illegal phones that allowed Ukraine to locate them and kill scores in Makiivka, in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. House of Representatives fails to elect a leader for the first time in a century, and heat records are smashed across Europe. Meanwhile, Russian-language independent website Vazhnyye Istorii looks at the dangerous rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the infamous Wagner paramilitary group.

[*Selam - Amharic, Ethiopia]

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Important Stories

Putin's Pet: How Wagner Group Boss Prigozhin Is Gaining Power — And Enemies

Putin used to keep his respectable and criminal circles of friends separate. But the increasing power of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former prisoner and head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has many inside and outside the Kremlin worried.

-Analysis-

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner PMC, has complicated relations not only with the Russian Defense Ministry, but also with the inner circle of Vladimir Putin. But in both cases, his position is increasingly one of power, as Prigozhin's role in the war with Ukraine has become ever more crucial.

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With convictions for theft, assault, and involving minors in criminal activity, Prigozhin spent many years in prison in his youth. In 1981, a court in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) sentenced him to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony, serving nearly 10 years.

One of Prigozhin's cellmates recently circulated a message that said that during his incarceration he belonged to the lowest caste of prisoners — the so-called "offended" who provided sexual services to other prisoners.

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