Putin faces ‘wave of criminality’ as Wagner troops return to Russia | Alec Luhn

Putin faces ‘wave of criminality’ as Wagner troops return to Russia | Alec Luhn

Russia is starting to reap what it has sown because uh at least we know now at least 48,000 prisoners were recruited into Vagner to fight in Ukraine and now the majority of those men have gone back at least you know up to 30,000 of them are now essentially walking free in Russia and we’ve started to see this kind of wave of criminality in Russia as a result of that and uh as a matter of fact it just came out today that um a former Vagner fighter who returned to Russia um who was a convicted murderer pardoned for his crimes in in exchange for fighting returned to Russia and actually uh killed slit the throat of an elderly woman and uh stabbed and nearly killed another elderly man after he returned to Russia so this is uh this is kind of the yeah the unintended consequences of this tactic now coming home to roost in Russia so we’ll start Alec very briefly by talking about President zelinski and his political problems the resignation of the head of Ukraine’s reconstruction agency briefly how important is Mustafa Nim’s departure for Ukraine for zelinski and I suppose for the future of Ukraine’s military activities I think it’s it’s of symbolic importance um and you know we then we’ll we’ll have to wait and see about more more concrete consequences um this obviously yeah it’s a blow to zalinski at a time when he is going to Berlin to make the case for more European funding to help rebuild Ukraine and there is some argument over how that funding should be spent uh whether it should go towards more immediate needs like trying to keep the lights on amid Uh Russian Russian missiles and targeting of uh electric power stations among other infastructure or whether it should go towards these kind of long-term development goals um you know at the conference in Berlin they even talking about Ukraine one day joining the European Union so so there there’s kind of two focuses which have been a little bit in competition with each other and uh the departure of mustaf andam you know calls that tension into in brings that tension to light even more he is a very well-known figure inside of Ukraine he was one of the figureheads one of the the the speakers and and activists who were very very involved in the 2014 Revolution which toppled a pro-russian corrupt Pro Russian president in Ukraine um he was one of the key faces during that so he’s really a household name in Ukraine and the fact that he’s stepping down and essentially quitting the zilinski team is is a is a big blow to zelinsky’s reputation I think I don’t think this is going to you know fundamentally change the you know over you know shake the foundations of of zelinsky’s popularity you know he’s still a wartime leader with the backing of the country but but it definitely is a blow to him and I would think that it would it would raise a lot of questions for European donors as they head to this conference now we’ve talked on the world in 10 before about the us relaxing some of the restrictions that it’s been placing on the weapons that it supplies Ukraine now though it’s lifting a ban on arming the country’s AZ of Brigade so what is the AZ of Brigade and why is it such a controversial move by the us so I think when we talk about the Azo Brigade what is it we have to kind of break it into two phases in the very very early phase of um the conflict in 2014 when Russia was backing these separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and um concealing its involvement uh but there was an act but there was active fighting at that point the azov Battalion emerged as a volunteer fighting force to um battle these Russia backed separatists in marup this coastal city in Southeastern Ukraine that was uh that had a lot of industry and shipping and was uh was under uh threat of being taken over by the by Russian Russia back separatists at that point azov definitely had very strong far-right Ultra Nationalist and even neonazi leanings it was started by a well-known uh Ukrainian alter nationalist uh who was later actually elected to Parliament and who has uh expressed um ethnically Nationalist and even anti-semitic views at times and many of its initial members uh also expressed anti-semitic statements um the the group linked to uh anti-semitic uh campaign materials uh it used a Nazi symbol a symbol that was used by Nazi units during the second world war called the woles angel uh as it’s uh it used a symbol very similar to that one and you know some of its Fighters even had uh swastika tattoos and and this and that so it was it had these these Neo-Nazi farri underpinnings but then over the course of the conflict it became something different as the conflict wore on as as of uh grew a reputation for being one of the most effective Ukrainian fighting units more and more recruits flooded its ranks many of whom did not have any sort of far-right ideology right the identity of the group shifted a bit into just uh you know less into less of a far-right kind of um symbolic uh group into more of just an effective fighting force that uh Ukraine has really relied upon and nowhere was that more evident than in 2022 when uh Russia threw a lot of its forces into this campaign to take the city of maral where aov was based and aov was essentially responsible for the entire defense of the city and uh hundreds of its fighters in the end holed up in a steel plant in the underground passages of this steel plant in marup uh fighting off the Russian Advance holding out underground even after the entire city above them had been taken by Russian forces for months um and in the end surrendering and uh many hundreds of them are still in captivity to this day so they became the symbol of the National of Ukrainian national resistance Heroes to the entire country and so there are these two the far-right Neo-Nazi under pinions and then the kind of uh beloved fighting unit that it’s become right when we talk about AO and so I think the the US Congress has tried to now recognize that whereas before the US had put this ban on supplying weapons to ASO and US Congress had even inserted language into these spending bills saying specifically that we C that arms cannot go to this uh Neo-Nazi regiment uh now that’s that’s shifted to where the state department has said well we didn’t find any allegation we didn’t find any evidence of allegations of Human Rights abuses by azov uh the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International pre had previously said that they had evidence that azov had been involved in torture and extrajudicial detentions um the state department has now said it hasn’t found any evidence of of those human rights abuses and therefore it’s going to go ahead providing both arms and training to asz of let’s talk about a group on the Russian side now uh I think many people might remember hearing about the the Vagner mercenary group this private Russian army which was heavily involved in the fighting uh when the war broke out then particularly in the city of bmot last year now we know about this huge toll that that battle the one in bmot took on Vagner forces don’t we yeah so th this is something that had uh been alluded to before heavy Russian losses in the the bmot meat grinder as it it’s come to be called um but but now there are hard documents showing that in fact 19,500 members of the Russian mercenary group Vagner were killed taking that City from uh Ukrainian forces last year this was a hugely symbolic battle um for both sides it became this kind of litmus test where both Vladimir Putin and Vladimir zilinski um wanted to to control this city as a as a as a sign of of what they could do and how they could win this conflict um and it became a the the graveyard for thousands and and now we know at least 9,500 Vagner Fighters the other interesting thing um about that figure is that most of those 17,000 of those Fighters were actually prisoners who were recruited from Russian prison prisons uh and promised their freedom in exchange for fighting for six months on the front lines in Ukraine uh this this was a controversial or this was a noted uh you know a new tactic at the time um we saw yvi progan the leader of the the Vagner mercenary group personally appearing in prison yards in Russia and uh uh recruiting these these prisoners um no matter what their crimes they could they could uh win their freedom on on the the front lines in Ukraine and uh you know this this just shows how how that ended up being essentially key to to the the Russian war offensive at that time as those prisoners ended up bearing the brunt of the casualties in the bakut operation of course it’s also interesting because um that bakut operation made kind of a national hero out of yeni pran the leader of Vagner who um grew became enveloped in this very public disagreement fight with the Russian military command um he claimed that they were not giving him to his troops enough ammunition in the in the fight to take bakut and that’s the reason that they were dying in great numbers and that fight ended up um leading him to the next month march on Moscow take his troops and his tanks and uh uh march on Moscow in this Insurrection in this coup attempt really against the military leadership in Moscow they came within 200 kilometers of Moscow it was uh the most dangerous uh moment for the Putin regime that we’ve seen in all 24 years of his Rule and that came directly out of bmot and the the disagreements that they had um between prosan and the military and also the national popularity that he had started to win as a result of bakut so of course you know that all came at this cost High Cost of Bloodshed and now Russia is starting to reap what it has sown because uh at least we know now at least 48,000 prisoners were recruited into Vagner to fight in Ukraine and now the majority of those men have gone back at least you know up to 30,000 of them are now essentially walking free in Russia and we’ve started to see this kind of wave of criminality in Russia as a result of that and uh as a matter of fact it just came out today that um a former Vagner fighter who returned to Russia um who was a convicted murderer pardoned for his crimes in in exchange for fighting returned to Russia and actually uh killed slit the throat of an elderly woman and uh stabbed and nearly killed another elderly man after he returned to Russia so this is uh this is kind of the yeah the unintended consequences of this tactic now coming home to roost in Russ Russia

“A former Wagner fighter who returned to Russia, who was a convicted murderer, slit the throat of an elderly woman and, stabbed and nearly killed another elderly man.”

Putin faces a “wave of criminality in Russia” as convicts freed to fight Ukrainians return home, explains journalist Alec Luhn.

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