Tonight, his family announced they had received news of his death under torture in Sednaya Prison. For the first 15 minutes, American military officials called their Russian counterparts and urged them to stop the attack. American intelligence officials say that the Wagner Group, known by the nickname of the retired Russian officer who leads it, is in Syria to seize oil and gas fields and protect them on behalf of the Assad government. Footage of the summary killing of Yevgeny Nuzhin was posted over the weekend by the Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone. Bouta is believed to have been killed in the spring of 2017, and a video of his death first emerged online in June 2017. In addition to their involvement in Syria, Libya, Central African Republic and Ukraine, Wagner operatives have also fought in Sudan, Mali and Mozambique, exerting Russian influence by proxy, doing the bidding of authoritarian leaders and, at times, seizing oil and gas fields or securing other material interests. Wagner has repeatedly been accused of war crimes and human rights abuses, including of the torture and slaying of prisoners in Syria, where it has been fighting alongside the Russian army and the government of Bashar al-Assad. Before he was killed, Bouta said Russian speaking soldiers had press ganged him and several others in custody at al-Draij into fighting contingents deployed to Homs to seize and protect oil and gas infrastructure. Mercenaries are illegal under Russian law. Nuzhin, 55, had been serving a 24-year prison sentence for a murder he committed in 1999 when he was freed in July and conscripted into Wagner, a notorious military group run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful Russian businessman and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Gruesome Soundtrack They are the Swiss Army knives of modern Russian warfare and serve as force multipliers, arms merchants, trainers of local military and security personnel, and political consultants, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Download the FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. Despite the Kremlins denial of any ties to Wagner, Mr. Utkin has been photographed next to Mr. Putin. Initially, Russian officials said only four Russian citizens but perhaps dozens more were killed; a Syrian officer said around 100 Syrian soldiers had died. In the video, Nuzhin was shown lying down with his head taped to a brick wall as an unidentified man in combat clothing hits him with a sledgehammer. The outcome of the battle, and much of its mechanics, suggest that the Russian mercenaries and their Syrian allies were in the wrong part of the world to try a simple, massed assault on an American military position. Hes a graduate of Harvards Davis Center and a recipient of New York University's Reporting Award and the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Journalism Award. Diplomacy, To Save France, Macron Is Dividing Europe, The United States Has Never Recovered From the Falklands War. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a wide-ranging conversation with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the Biden administrations trade and economic policiesand the impacts they have on the world. Download the new FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. The documents obtained by The Times estimated 200 to 300 of the pro-regime force were killed. What can we glean from the current state of play on the battlefield? Ever since Washington passed its Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies and investment opportunities for clean energy initiatives, a cShow morehorus of lawmakers in Europe and Asia have begun to say the United States is fostering unfair competition. The newspaper also offered to hand over materials acquired to Russian law enforcement. Its a really adaptable network, which makes it hard to target, but also hard to talk about, said Margolin of C4ADS. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. After more than a year of government stonewalling and dodging allegations about the case, advocates for the victim say, Russian authorities will now be forced to go on record no matter what. U.S. forces clashed with pro-Syrian government forces, the majority of which are believed to have been Russian mercenaries, in Syrias Deir Ezzor province in 2018. Companies linked to the Wagner group are snapping up oil and gas leaseswith an eye to pumping influence, not oil. The Ukraine Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told Congress that a "a couple hundred Russians" were killed in the attack. American warplanes arrived in waves, including Reaper drones, F-22 stealth fighter jets, F-15E Strike Fighters, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships and AH-64 Apache helicopters. By early evening, more than 500 troops and 27 vehicles including tanks and armored personnel carriers had amassed. Syrian fighters who support the government of President Bashar al-Assad at a hospital in the eastern city of Deir-al Zour in February. "Yet, [private military companies] also pose substantial risks for a regime determined to keep a lid on domestic outcry over its military adventurism and to manage blowback," the report said. The victim is reported to be Mohammad Taha al Ismail Abdallah of Deir ez-Zor, whom the contractors accused of deserting from the Syrian army. The Wagner Group is a mercenary firm that has been heavily involved in the fighting in Ukraine. The fighters were reportedly wounded in a United States airstrike near the city. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States Central Command has refined the amount of equipment, logistics, coordination and tactics required to mix weapons fired from both the air and ground. Having first appeared in 2014 in eastern Ukraine, where Wagner fighters trained and fought alongside separatist rebels against the Ukrainian army, the groups operatives have since cropped up everywhere from Venezuela to the Central African Republic, Syria, and Libya. The documents reveal that the company earned $162 million from oil and gas fields in central Syria in 2017 alone. The contractors train at a GRU compound in Molkino, a village in southwestern Russia, and the SBU has identified over 25 Russian officers who instruct Wagner contractors in skills ranging from artillery to combat engineering. Marine rocket artillery was fired from the ground. The documents described the fighters as a pro-regime force, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Subscribers can send in questions in advance. The perpetrators, who have not yet been charged, were identified by the Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta as private military security contractors for the so-called Wagner Group. Who Is Vagner? The Paris-based Syrian investigative news site, Want to read more on this topic or region? Two years after the United States clashed with some sort of Wagner Group contingent in Deir Ezzor, the United States government still doesnt know anything about the organizational structure of these military contingents, Rondeaux said. Some of the Green Berets and Marines took aim from exposed hatches. The GRU often directs and supports the group in combat, and the available evidence indicates close coordination in A Russian-speaking man who filmed the torture and killing of a prisoner in Syria has been identified as a member of Wagner, a Russian private military company with ties to the Kremlin that has aggressively expanded into the Middle East and Africa in recent years. An analysis of Russian social media groups for followers of the Wagner Group as well as the friend networks of individuals who shared details of Boutas murder online revealed a burgeoning online movement of Russian ultranationalists with an abiding interest in mercenary culture who claimed to have served in Russian military units, according to the research by Frontline Forensics, which was published by New America. Join in-depth conversations and interact with foreign-policy experts with. The brief filed on Friday in connection with Boutas case contends that the Russian government holds effective control over the Russian private military contingent that killed Bouta during operations at the al-Shaer gas plant. Media and think tank reports indicate that natural gas extraction by EvroPolis, a firm Prigozhin holds a stake in according to U.S. authorities, generated about $162 million from al-Shaer and several other nearby gas fields in 2017, the same year Bouta was killed. They inspected their weapons and ensured the trucks were loaded with anti-tank missiles, thermal optics and food and water. As the videos of Boutas torture and beheading were circulated, they became a rallying point for the social networks that have coalesced around Russias mercenary activity abroad. There is a dynamic evolution in the fusion of Russian ultranationalist groups and Russian paramilitaries going on that nobody is really paying attention to or seeing yet, said Candace Rondeaux, a professor of practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and the author of the report. Wagner forces have appeared in Ukraine, presumably to fight alongside Russian troops in Mr. Putins war. Allegations of the Wagner Groups involvement in the torture and murder of al-Abdullah, who is better known by his nicknames, Hamdi or Hamadi Bouta, first emerged in June 2017 when a two-minute long video clip of the killing surfaced in an anonymous post on a Reddit subchannel popular with military geeks. It was quickly seized upon by open source investigators, who first identified the location of the video as the Shaer gas station near Homs and then pored over the video for clues to the mens identities. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a wide-ranging conversation with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on the Biden administrations trade and economic policiesand the impacts they have on the world. Eight of the 11 individuals and all seven entities sanctions were linked to Wagner's largest and longest-runningknown operations in Africa, in the Central African Republic and Sudan. But Russian military officials said they had no control over the fighters assembling near the river even though American surveillance equipment monitoring radio transmissions had revealed the ground force was speaking in Russian. In the days leading up to the attack, and on opposite sides of the Euphrates River, Russia and the United States were backing separate offensives against the Islamic State in Syrias oil-rich Deir al-Zour Province, which borders Iraq. Under a 2019 U.S. law known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, anyone connected to war crimes in Syria under Assads regime could be subject to sanctions. Delivered Wednesday. The newspaper identifies the man by his first name and the first letter of his surname but withholds his full name amid concerns for his family's safety. Russian Paramilitaries Accused of Torture and Beheading in Landmark Legal Case Against Wagner Group IN THE DOCK The Kremlin-backed Wagner Group will be Right now in Syria, were in the most aggressive E.W. The reaction team sped toward the fight. It wasnt until November 2019, when further videos emerged, that journalists were able to identify the perpetrators as well as the victim. EvroPolis really, perhaps more than any other single entirety in the Prigozhin-associated network, captures the full suite of services that the Prigozhin networks have access to, said Margolin. Theywere Wagner commanders said to be linked to Russia's capture of the town of Soledar in Ukraine in January. horus of lawmakers in Europe and Asia have begun to say the United States is fostering unfair competition. Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) serves food to Vladimir Putin in 2011. Youre on the list! "In exchange for access to natural resources principally diamonds and gold Wagner has provided President Faustin Archange-Touadera with military and political support, which has proven pivotal in sustaining his embattled presidency against an onslaught of rebel groups. MOSCOW -- The graphic video shows four men in camouflage gear exchanging jokes in unaccented Russian as they pour flammable liquid over a man's mutilated corpse strung up on two wooden beams. A new report by Frontline Forensics, a joint initiative of Arizona State University and the New America think tank, published on Tuesday explores the circumstances of Boutas death using company records and social media analysis. FPs Ravi Agrawal spoke with two of the very best Russia experts:Angela Stent, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author ofPutins World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, and Michael Kofman, the research program director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses. Syrian authorities arrested Bouta as he crossed the border and turned him over to members of the Syrian military. Vagner and other Russian private military companies have helped advance Moscow's influence efforts in regions beyond the Middle East, targeting countries that are often rich with natural resources and vulnerable to political influence from the outside. They are the Swiss Army knives of modern Russian warfare and serve as force multipliers, arms merchants, trainers of local military and security personnel, and political consultants, according to a recent. But researchers from groups such as Bellingcat and the Conflict Intelligence Team, as well as Russian journalists most notably from Novaya Gazeta and Fontanka, have been able to use fragments of publicly available information to build a clearer picture of who is fighting for Russias private military contractors abroad. Saturday's additional sanctions were decided "in view of the international dimension and gravity of the group's activities, as well as its destabilizing impact on the countries where it is active,"said a statement from the European Council. Rather than being a single organization, Wagner is an opaque network of titular companies and private military contractors that simultaneously further the Kremlins interests abroad while lining the pockets of those involved by gaining access to lucrative energy and natural resources mining contracts in the countries in which they operate. In April, the French army released imagery from drone cameras that showed Wagner Group soldiers laying out dead bodies in the sand near a French army base in Mali after the French withdrew. Representatives for Stroytransgaz and Prigozhins main company Concord Consulting and Management did not respond to requests for comment made before lawyers representing Boutas family went public with details of the Moscow court filing on Monday. He married and started a family. This week, Moscow denied reports of Wagner already being operative in Burkina Faso another West African country that recently underwent a coup, fell out with former colonial power France, and is showing no sign of a return to democratic rule. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a frank discussion about the Biden administrations China policy and alternatives that it ought to consider. The report also revealed that at least one of the Russian-speaking men in the video had fought in the embattled region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine before traveling to Syria to work for a contingent affiliated to the Wagner Group. Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy is a shadow of its former self.. Among the EU's latest package of Russian sanctions, members of the Wagner Group mercenary company were included for alleged crimes committed in Africa. Prigozhin, who is under western sanctions for his role in Wagner, on Sunday voiced his approval for the killing, calling Nuzhin a traitor. Online messages sent to him and his wife by the Guardian were not immediately returned on Thursday. The incident will serve to further blacken the reputation of Wagner, which was founded by a businessman close to Vladimir Putin. A billboard in Bangui with the slogan "The Central African Republic is hand in hand with Russia" (file photo), published what it claimed was the victim's name. A recent investigative report on the Wagner Group's activities in Africa surmised that it "has rapidly become the most influential form of Russian engagement in Africa today," politically, economically and militarily. By signing up, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to occasionally receive special offers from Foreign Policy. Journalists, open-source researchers, and other observers have tracked Russian military companies to operations in the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Libya. With Putins help, Assad has constrained the capacity of the United Nations to deliver health supplies in opposition-controlled territory, which faces rising risk of the coronavirus. When that failed, American troops fired warning shots at a group of vehicles and a howitzer. Wagner is estimated to have as many as 2,500 men in Syria. By one estimate from Harvard University, more than 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, in addition to the deaths of more than 7,000 Ukrainian civilians. And at a minimum, squaring off in crowded battlefields has added to heightened tensions between Russia and the United States as they each seek to exert influence in the Middle East. Bracing for an attack, the Green Berets prepared to launch the reaction force. Ilya Nuzhin, Yevgenys son, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the man in the video was his father but declined to give further comments, citing security concerns. One allied Syrian fighter was wounded. Following his capture by Ukrainian forces in September, Nuzhin gave a series of interviews in the country, in which he said he had joined the Wagner group to get out of prison and that he quickly hatched a plan to surrender to Ukraine. Between 200 to 300 fighters were killed in the battle, including scores of Russian mercenaries, to be working in the region to seize control of a nearby gas plant on behalf of EvroPolis. Ilya Novikov, one of the Russian attorneys who filed the ground-breaking legal complaint, said in a written statement that he and his co-counsel Petr Zaikin, decided to initiate the case after a demand for Russias Investigative Committee, the countrys top prosecutorial body, apparently fell flat. Some of the fighters appeared to have been recruited from Syria and Libya, the Pentagons spokesman, John F. Kirby, has said. Their shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, observers say. Alongside Russian troops in Mr. Putins War military officials called their Russian counterparts and urged them to the! Prepared to launch the reaction force say the United States has Never Recovered the... 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