Soldiers from Russia’s Wagner private military company, 400 of whom have allegedly been sent to Venezuela to prop up its embattled authoritarian leader, President Nicolas Maduro, are in fact controlled directly by Russia’s military intelligence, Ukraine’s SBU security service has said.
SBU head Vasyl Hrytsak cited evidence that included passport data, flight tickets and company records when he announced at a press conference on Jan. 28 that the SBU had proved that the Wagner soldiers being sent into Venezuela are in fact a secret detachment of operatives contracted by Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU.
He also said that Wagner had been active in supporting brutal authoritarian regimes in Syria and Sudan, and suggested they had been involved in the Central African Republic, or CAR, and took part in the killing of journalists who tried to expose their work.
Earlier evidence shared by the SBU seems to support the assertion that Wagner’s operatives and fighters have been highly active in locations such as Syria and Sudan where the Kremlin is propping up authoritarian regimes, while also pursuing its own interests.
Christo Grozev, an expert on the GRU and lead investigator for the London-based investigative agency Bellingcat – who previously told Kyiv Post that “fire-starters” working for Russian intelligence are escalating their operations against Ukraine – said the SBU had revealed something significant.
He said that the passports of the Wagner mercenaries had been issued, going by their serial numbers, by the same passport desk that issues documents, almost exclusively, to known GRU operatives.
Using the same evidence, Bellingcat has previously outed the identity of Russian agents engaged in espionage abroad in a number of high profile exposes.
Ukraine’s SBU further states that “the analysis of passport data of more than a thousand employees of ( Wagner) shows that the vast majority of documents… were issued centrally in Moscow by the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation, who also issued documents for the cover and for the officers… ‘Petrov’ and ‘Boshirov’… in Salisbury.”
Petrov and Boshirov are the alleged GRU agents who, according to U.K. authorities, deployed a deadly novichok nerve agent in a terrorist attack on the streets of Salisbury, England in March 2018 as they attempted to assassinate the former Russian spy Sergei Skripral.
Bellingcat later revealed their true identities to be Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, career spies and decorated special operations soldiers who are highly likely to have fought in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Grozev said he was certain that the SBU are correct in identifying Wagner as an instrument of the Kremlin.
“There’s no doubt that Wagner is a front for the GRU,” he told Kyiv Post on Jan. 29.
“The military chain of command goes from (Wagner CEO Dmitry) Utkin directly to the GRU.”
“I have independently verified that all of these passport numbers (published by the SBU) indeed match those names,” Grozev said in a later tweet. “Furthermore, all of these young men took regular flights to Krasnodar (near occupied Crimea). Which is funny because that’s where Wagner’s training camp is,” he added.
Ukraine connections
Utkin – a former Ukrainian citizen who defected to Russia, according to the SBU – and his outfit Wagner first came to the attention of investigators and journalists in Ukraine’s besieged eastern region of Luhansk in 2014.
There, it’s alleged by security officials, he led Russian regular troops and local collaborators against Ukrainian forces in the earliest and bloodiest days of the war.
The SBU says that many Wagner fighters participated in Russia’s war against Ukraine from 2014 until 2015, particularly in the assault on Donetsk airport and the eastern town of Debaltsev – subsequently, the SBU says they were sent to the Central African Republic, where they were implicated in the murders of three Russian journalists who were investigating their work.
In 2016, Utkin was reportedly photographed with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Moscow reception to honor and award military veterans.
The SBU says that Wagner has a number of what it calls “Ukrainian traitors” in its ranks, accusing them of having taken Russian money and citizenship in return for fighting for the Kremlin.
