When the corpse of a Wagner mercenary fighter arrived in his small Russian village in late February after he was killed fighting in Ukraine, some residents wanted to give him a hero’s burial. Others could not forget that the former prisoner had stabbed his father to death. The ruckus prompted a stream of acrimonious comments […]
Read More
Despite the high cost in lives, Ukrainian and Russian leaders said that the battle for Bakhmut would rage on, even as they brace for a war that they expect to widen and intensify as the weather warms. Officials in both Kyiv and Moscow predicted that Ukraine, taking delivery of Western tanks, missiles and other arms, […]
Read More
NAIROBI, Kenya — Fueled by guns, gold and social media, the rivalry between Russia and the West in Africa is rapidly escalating. The latest flashpoint is Chad, a sprawling desert nation at the crossroads of the continent, now a plum target for Russia’s expanding effort. The United States recently warned Chad’s president that Russian mercenaries […]
Read More
For months, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been Russia’s most public and provocative military leader in Ukraine. When he is not lauding the heroics of his private fighting force from the front lines, he is castigating the Russian generals for starving him of the supplies he needs to finish the work they could not. Yet now, as […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — From Kupiansk in the north to Avdiivka in the south, through Bakhmut, Lyman and dozens of towns in between, Russian forces are attacking along a 160-mile arc in eastern Ukraine in an intensifying struggle for tactical advantage before possible spring offensives. Heavy fighting was reported on Monday in and around Avdiivka, a […]
Read More
Congress, Biden split on designating Wagner group as terrorist organization Skip to content FILE – Visitors wearing military camouflage stand at the entrance of the ‘PMC Wagner Centre’, which is associated with businessman and founder of the Wagner private military group Yevgeny Prigozhin, during the official opening of the office block during National Unity Day, […]
Read More
Vladimir Putin quickly realized that his Russian army (now chock full of inexperienced troops after cycling through massive deaths and subsequent drafts) wasn’t able to get things done on its own in Ukraine. That would be the sole reason why he reeled in the Wagner Group to be his private army of mercenaries against Volodymyr […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched its biggest aerial barrage in weeks on Thursday, blasting targets across Ukraine with a diverse array of weapons, including its newest hypersonic missiles, in what it said was retaliation for an armed incursion into Russian territory last week. Volleys of missiles streaked into Kyiv and other cities overnight and in […]
Read MoreWagner Group leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin posted this image of him in Ukraine earlier today. In a plot that seems fit for a spy flick, the Central Intelligence Agency says it is secretly helping to fight against Russian mercenaries led by a villainous caterer. CIA Director Bill Burns said that the agency is doing everything in its […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has been forced to use more of its professional recruits in Bakhmut to replace its depleted supply of enlisted prisoners, who are perishing by the thousands in the longest battle of the war, a Ukrainian official said on Tuesday. The claim suggested that Ukraine sees an opportunity, despite […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s top generals want to bolster the defenses of the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut, the government said Monday, signaling that rather than retreat from the city, they will pursue a strategy of bleeding the Russian army in a battle of attrition before a planned Ukrainian counterattack. Ukraine has calculated that the […]
Read More
The commander, who uses the code name Duke, said Wagner used untrained prisoners in the first line of attack and then, after one or two hours, as the Ukrainian troops were tiring, sent special forces into the fray, attacking from the flanks. “It was very good tactics,” Duke said. The Kill Box But Ukraine has […]
Read More
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces visited soldiers in Bakhmut for the second time in less than a week on Friday, a reflection of the precarious position Ukrainian forces find themselves in as they cling to their positions in the battered city. Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander, warned in a statement that Russia was […]
Read More
Ales Bialiatski in the defendants’ cage in a Minsk, Belarus, courtroom at the start of a hearing in January.Credit…Vitaly Pivovarchik/BelTA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A Belarusian court sentenced Ales Bialiatski, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October for his decades of defending human rights in Belarus, to 10 years in prison […]
Read More
BAKHMUT, Ukraine — As Russian forces launched assaults from multiple directions aimed at encircling Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern city of Bakhmut, the information campaign around the battle was also intensifying. Signs are mounting that Ukraine might be forced to retreat from the decimated city. But on Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, accused […]
Read More
President Emmanuel Macron of France has embarked on a quest to win favor across Africa on the basis of a policy of “profound humility,” chastened by a decade-long frustrated military intervention and a wave of anti-French sentiment in France’s former African colonies. In practice, as he outlined in a speech this week, this reset will […]
Read More
The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group accused the country’s defense minister and its most senior general of treason on Tuesday, intensifying the most high-profile dispute in the Russian forces since the invasion of Ukraine began. Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been taking aim at military leaders in a series of increasingly hostile audio […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — As Russia steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Moscow’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults. The fighting has also come at a cost for Ukraine, […]
Read More
BAKINSKAYA, Russia — It was a lonely funeral. Four narrow caskets, recently pulled from the back of a covered truck, rested on stands under an insistent snowfall as an Orthodox priest performed last rites. Three gravediggers in tattered jackets looked on with their hands folded solemnly. An excavator was parked close by, ready to dig […]
Read More
LVIV, Ukraine — Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire. His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine gun fire,” said the […]
Read More
Russian forces edged closer to Bakhmut on Sunday, claiming to capture a village on the outskirts of the strategic city in eastern Ukraine and hammering nearby settlements with tank rounds, mortar fire and artillery shells. The Wagner private military company, whose forces have been leading the brutal and monthslong Russian campaign to seize the city, […]
Read More
He challenged Ukraine’s president to a duel from the cockpit of a bomber. He threatened to urinate on the face of a critic. He declared his private army was fighting for “every street, every house, every stairwell” in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. And that was just the past couple of weeks in the […]
Read More
The founder of the Kremlin-affiliated Wagner mercenary group, known for its ruthless tactics and harsh discipline, said on Thursday that it would no longer recruit fighters in Russian prisons. That would end a practice that has raised criticism from human rights groups but helped Moscow grind out advances in Ukraine’s east. The claim by the […]
Read More
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian forces attacked dozens of Ukrainian positions across the eastern front, the Ukrainian military said on Monday, as Moscow’s assaults widened and intensified ahead of what Kyiv has warned could be the Kremlin’s largest offensive since the first weeks of the war. The Ukrainian General Staff, which is responsible for military strategy, […]
Read More
A fierce fight was raging on Sunday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where a Russian paramilitary leader said Ukrainian forces were defending “every street, every house, every stairwell,” as they waged a desperate effort to deny Moscow its first significant battlefield success in months. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private military […]
Read More
The Russian military has been following the Wagner playbook and deliberately using the poorly trained troops to draw, and deplete, Ukrainian fire, senior American military and defense officials said. Kusti Salm, Estonia’s deputy defense minister, in a briefing with reporters in Washington last week, said that Russia’s casualties were high in part because of its […]
Read More