An indiscretion on Telegram about the location of this headquarters allowed Kiev to bomb the headquarters of the soldiers of fortune
The Ukrainian army achieved great propaganda success yesterday by destroying the base of the Wagner Company mercenaries in the town of Popansa, in Luhansk. According to the data released so far, the headquarters of these fortune soldiers has been hit by US precision missiles – the Himars system – which are now part of the invaded country’s arsenal.
The presence of Wagner’s troops in Ukraine is one of the worst kept secrets of the invasion of Ukraine. Like other private armies, Russia uses these paid troops for missions where it does not want to endanger regular soldiers and carry out risky operations. For this reason, the ‘wagnerites’ have distinguished themselves in decisive battles such as the capture of Azov or Mariupol. The fact that private troops are deployed – in many cases ex-prisoners – also allows them to act outside the rules of war, accusing these soldiers of all kinds of crimes, from rape to murder of civilians.
Due to the controversy surrounding their interventions, the gang of mercenaries usually does not appear in official information about the course of the war and their participation in the invasion has even been denied. However, on August 8, Russian war correspondent Sergey Sereda reported on his Telegram channel that he had visited Wagner’s base. “I arrived in Popansa and stopped at the Wagner barracks. They treated me like a member of their family and told me quite a few funny stories,” she wrote. This comment was enough for the Ukrainian intelligence services to start tracking data about that headquarters, the location of which was secret until that date.
In the early hours of Sunday on Monday, the Wagner base was hit by Himars missiles, a precision strike system with which the United States supplied the Ukrainian military. These missiles have a range of between 180 and 300 kilometers and are considered to be one of the most accurate weapon systems manufactured in the world to date. Footage of the barracks shown in recent hours shows gunmen trying to free the wounded mercenaries from the rubble. Weapons can also be seen destroyed by the deflagrations. The number of victims is unknown.
The Wagner company is owned by Yevgeni Progzhin, a former convict who owned President Putin’s favorite restaurant in St. Petersburg, according to Russian dissidents. Hand in hand with the Russian president, Priogzhin rose in the business world until he became a successful businessman. One of the shady activities attributed to him is the organization of the Wagner company and the creation of the digital infrastructure from which destabilization campaigns have been carried out in the West by spreading fake news on the Internet.
The Wagner group – which takes its name from the nickname used by one of its founders, the member of the Russian special forces Dimitri Utlin – has been discovered in conflicts such as those in Syria or Libya, as well as in the pro-Russian uprising in Donbass, sponsored by Moscow in 2014. In 2018, this private army starred in one of its darkest episodes when they attacked the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, a place where US forces were deployed against the Islamic State (Isis).
The indiscretion in Telegram that allowed the destruction of the headquarters of these soldiers is not the only one discovered in recent hours. The Bellingcat investigative journalism consortium yesterday released information identifying a soldier who performed with Chechen troops in Luhansk and is allegedly responsible for the castration of a Ukrainian prisoner and subsequent murder.
The investigators were able to locate the alleged torturer thanks to a cowboy hat he was wearing in the footage and were even able to call him by phone. The person concerned denied the facts attributed to him and assured that the images of torture corresponded to a settlement between Ukrainians. This version has been questioned by Bellingcat experts.
Source: La Verdad
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