Wagner mercenaries likely serving in Russian national guard; Ukrainian Special Forces engage Wagner fighters in Sudan
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Large elements of the Wagner mercenary group have likely been assimilated into the command structure of Russian national guard (Rosgvardiya), the UK defence ministry said in its daily intelligence briefing.
The Wagner arm in the Rosgvardiya is likely being led by Pavel Prigozhin, son of the late Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash shortly after Wagner fighters captured the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and marched on Moscow – acts that Vladimir Putin declared “treason”.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 12 November 2023.
The UK has proscribed the Wagner group as a terrorist organisation.
Other groups of Wagner fighters have likely joined another Russian private military company, Redut, the UK defence ministry said, which has 7,000 personnel in total.
While the UK defence ministry believes that the Russian state is now exercising more control over Wagner group activities and its former personnel following the July 2023 mutiny, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said that Wagner medics have joined Chechen Akhmat special forces. That’s in addition to the 170 fighers that have already joined Akhmat, Kadyrov said in October.
Meanwhile, the Kyiv Post has exclusively obtained two videos purporting to show Ukrainian special forces operators hunting mercenaries employed by the Kremlin’s Wagner Group in Sudan.
According to a source in Ukraine’s security and defense sector, an operation is currently ongoing to “clean up the Wagner PMC, their local terrorists and the Russian Federation’s special services” in the African country.
The Ukrainian government has neither officially acknowledged deployment of field operators to Sudan nor conduct of operations targeting Wagner fighters in the country. Last month CNN reported a series of drone strikes targeting Wagner-backed rebels near Sudan’s capital were “characteristic” of Kyiv’s special forces.
Ukrainian news portal RBC-Ukraine contacted Ukraine’s HUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov at the time for clarification on the situation in Sudan, to which he replied: “We can neither confirm nor deny this.”
“You can also recall the words of General Budanov that Ukraine will destroy Russian war criminals anywhere in the world, wherever they are,” Yusov also said.
Russia, along with the Wagner Group, was directly involved in the coup in Sudan in 2019, supporting Hemedti and his fighters in the conflict and supplying weapons, with Wagner specifically providing surface-to-air missiles to the Rapid Reaction Force (RSF).
