ah, how do you state controlled information? moscow is one of the day of the world. it has an incredible facial recognition technology. how does the narrative improve public opinion better? know, how is it in general, they can we flaming the video? read like, while they denied any grade the listening post dissects the media. we don't cover the news, we cover the way the news is cover. the private military group that russia is said to rely on. the recent ro involving wagner in ukraine has revealed its role in the war there. so who's behind this group and how is that surfing brushes, global outreach? this is inside story. ah

hello, welcome to the program, i'm tom mccrae, the war and ukraine is one year olds. thousands of people have lost their lives, and millions are displaced, mid continued fighting on the front lines and freezing temperatures. all sides now promising a spring offensive, or some of the heaviest fighting is taking place around the town of buck moot. russia has made some advances using what ukrainian forces say, a wave after wave of infantry soldiers and mercenaries from the wagner group. that slowed ukrainian grinds to a virtual standstill. but the man behind the masonry force is moscow is starving. his men of ammunition, of russia's ministry of defense issued a statement addressing the allegations. it reads attempts to create a split within the close mechanism of interaction and support between units of the

russian groups a counter productive and work solely to the benefit of the enemy. the command of the joint group of troops pays special constant and priority attention to providing volunteers and military personnel of the assault units with everything necessary. all statements allegedly made on behalf of the assault units about the lack of ammunition. absolutely untrue. a will begin our discussion in a moment. first, let's take a closer look. at the wagner group, the private paramilitary force was established in 2014 by your guinea progression after russia annex crimea. progression is a russian businessman with close ties to president vladimir putin. he was once known as persons shift for his catering activities, while the group is active in parts of the middle east, west africa, and latin america. the wagner group is also one of russia's main military forces in ukraine, had recently recruited prisoners in russia to fight in return for their freedom. if

they survived, it has many sources of foreign income, including from natural resources. ah, but for more on this, i'm joined by our guests. intimately see is peter yelled soft associate professor of international security affairs at the national defense university in washington, d. c. as katrina doxey and associate director and fellow at the center for strategic and international studies. and nico of europe, you're an independent journalist who's location is undisclosed for security reasons . a warm are welcome to you will thank you very much for being on inside story. if i can begin with, you piece it in the last week or so, a wagner group is claimed it now controls a key village near bach motes and is making gains around there. i mean, can you just give us a bit of an overview of how effective they have been as a fighting force, a new crime sofa. they've been pretty effective compared to like other components

of the russian invasion. i see 3 major components, the regular army, the chechen battalions, and the wagner rule. the question is that there are effectiveness was due to enormous brutality. the pentagon estimates the numbers up to possibly 4050000 people and 80 percent, or even 90 percent of the people are convict basically brought directly from jails. this is like a very reminiscent of the style and its practice during world war 2. and i would say even worse, so there was active come from their brutality. and from the fact that there's a lot of basically regular armies being following or any kind of rules or war. and this clearly causes conflict. nika you've spoken and interviewed

members, former members of the wagner group, what they told you about what it's like from the inside. basically like an a group that was founded in the aftermath of the rich know phase of the work done, which was 20142015. so it's made up of a lot of the veteran of war. but basically what, what i've heard from, from most of them, it's also backed up by some of the interrogation videos that the crating sometimes posted. basically most of them are in it for the, for the money. i mean, like, there are some, some of them who try to address something more patriotic fighting for the motherland. but really like the main motivation of money. what did they say though? what it's like, fighting for the more with the organization, like inside the guys i talk to like they haven't talked to anyone.

and the reason why folks recognize it in syria and from other combat. at that time, it was mainly made up of a former professional soldiers, military experience. so at that time, it was fairly disciplined. i mean, there were some incidents like the famous story with the syrian army disaster but executed and they hadn't but generally they said that it was very disciplined by the was how it is now. whoever not out there, basically taking everybody and anybody taking convict just because you can some of the necessary make you a good so i'm not sure how down like on the discipline front now. okay. katrina, can you just give us an idea of the man behind the wagner group precaution? i mean, he's got a pretty brutal reputation as being, you know,

incredibly cruel and, and kill us. but he's also extremely powerful, isn't a yes. and actually, i think we have seen over the course of the past year as the war is gone on, he's really taken this as an opportunity to assert his power and to try to move up and better his political position strengthen his relationship with law marapoo and so for gozine has long been the leader of the wagner group, but he actually at last fall, finally admitted that publicly for the 1st time prior to that he actually went so far as to bring law suits against researchers and media outlets that published anything accusing him of being linked to wagner and last fall we had an absolute about face where he came out publicly, acknowledging that he was involved in the founding and is not the leader of the wagner group. and shortly thereafter, he began to appear in

a variety of propaganda and recruitment videos, including on the front lines, of course, the videos of him recruiting directly out of prisons and russia. and about a month afterward, wagner established its 1st headquarters in saint petersburg, notably on russian soil, despite private military companies, technically being illegal under russian legal code. one all of this i think points to the fact that it he's, he's much more confident in his position. ah, relative to pu ann and using wagner and the war is allowing him to better his political fortune. although now we are, of course seeing him feuding with those in the ministry of defense and various other political leaders. jo peter, i just wanted to talk about this a little bit to him and he's gone publican in an a big way criticizing the russian military and cooling outta moscow's bureaucracy and blaming them for some of the

failures of russia as seen in the fighting. i mean, he's recently just posted a picture on social media showing de lindsay of wagner soldiers lying dead on the ground, saying the dates were because of a lack of ammunition. and we recently saw that the defense ministry is called that absolutely untrue. what do you think his rationale is for, for coming out and speaking so publicly and criticizing? so many people in power like the russian military and moscow was a bureaucracy. i think he actually in this case, he might be gen, generally sincerely and frustrated because he thinks that he brought some minor victories in the past. and he, thing of the russian army as not very efficient and from his respective his right, the russian army with the regular army, is today a colonial army, a very significant percentage of conscript. so old people who joined the army, come from the national minorities, different nationalities of doug is done,

will react to the poorest of the poor. i right now visiting the b. c. the city is filled with russian kids 20 year old, who is came from thing peters book and marco. so the russian professional armies, regular army is extremely effective. but in the end of the day discipline tested ukraine because of different portions of this russian and based on force method or of fighting and other that's good news for them. and there are possible scenarios here, one scenarios, a put in decide to get rid of prove origin. that's great news for your grade. if oprah gordon and wagner group give fighting with the regular force of the russian army and plus the children battalions, which i also think are kind of similar to most orse because i don't believe they have allegiance to russia. they really have allegiance to come up and put in. so yeah, this is in fact, it's horrible to say,

but it's good news for the world and for ukraine, brought in the wagner groups and taking massive losses. think more than $50000.00 did at the stage. i mean, they're just being used as cannon fodder and how does the wagner group go about replacing them if, as i've said, they're not going to recruit from inside prisons anymore. oh, well, that's actually part of the whole point of the group as i understand it. so the 1st kind of major conflict deployed in was syria and serial was sold to the russian of like back as like this, but the world, the torso, asian workers, those basically just saw the air strikes, right. not that there are foods in the ground, but there were no ground boots the ground were back now. and the reason they were to play was basically yet they were they were kind of because they didn't come up on the official list of russian casualties. he can use as many of them as

you can as you want. it's still a bloodless more because like the official soldiers like the conscript on dying. i mean the look like above the school on the, on the russian side. but how do you go about replacing them if you're losing that many min so quickly, they're saying that they're stopping recruitment from present. but they also said that when they neglect nation very hard to tell what's going on, kind of behind the scenes of like, not caring government i work with because like beef being with the, with the regular army. so i, i wouldn't, i wouldn't put too much into like any official pronouncements like, oh yeah, we could and maybe they stopped for now, but they're going to start doing it later on. maybe there is going to be there's also talk of another way mobilization just general concepts as well. ok. katrina, who does the group actually report to and get orders from them?

is that the russian military or is it directly from person or do they just pretty much do what they want? wagner reports back to for goes and he is their leader. although his actions are, of course closely discussed with you and to make sure that the things wagner is doing are in line with the goals of the russian state. so, notably, wagner is not officially connected to the russian military or the russian government. it's more of this informal link, even though we see them clearly carrying out rushes goals. and actually we've seen that they actually operate a training base that is co located with a spec, not training base, normal quino, russia and in some of their other deployments. further afield, including in sub saharan africa, they've actually worked alongside russian military troops and russia, intelligence personnel. okay. peter, i'm in predictions of his he known pudding fence a well over 2 decades and they had a very,

very close relationship. but because of some of his criticism that we've seen over the last few weeks, i mean it's in our tension and that relationship and how do you think that's being affected? well, it's very difficult to predict what food was going to happen. but we know that food didn't betray many of his falls. there have been people who've been given to washington to europe. so, i mean, if you go too far and he'll aggravate and the he can sacrifice him. i do not think that will of the mercenaries, because it's exactly, you know, as mr. horrible said, this is, i mean, this is basically all unaccounted casualties. it's great to have that kind of a mercenary, a whole army because if you lose like 10000 people or 5000 extra people, you don't have to actually properly consider them. f casual is what happened. for example, in syria, several years ago that actually the us special forces killed the whole bunch of

wagner. people in fulton didn't feel like you have to react because they're not considered the, the regular russian army. i do think that yeah, if you go to the bar in conflict, go with such an open conflict with garage you month. enjoy. go. oh yeah, put in my dispos him. what do you think the car do you think that progressions every skills, putting his head above the parapet and, and putting himself in danger? long term? yeah, the basically the way puts in control just in, in russia generally is he kind of split his, he keeps them cord split up. they have up because faction a gosh and faction the army faction. like if you go back on the home front, you know like the m b a the f s b. they've had that in the past.

yeah. potentially, if it, pre gordon runs out of favor then, then things could definitely go south for them. but it's hard to tell are happening behind time. yeah. and, and katrina, you mentioned just a couple of minutes ago. wagner has a presence in africa, which is your brother major. can you just give us an idea of exactly what their role is there and what they're trying to achieve to are. so over the past, roughly 6 years, wagner has seriously expanded its presence in africa and particularly subsaharan africa. so in those cases, rather than operating directly as a force multiplier, working alongside russian military efforts, they are partnering with governments and local countries that typically these countries have weak governance, ongoing security challenges and rich natural resources. and so wagner comes and

often under bidding competitors in terms of what their monthly salary is for operating alongside local sources, and they're able to offer security services, training services, combat expertise, information operations, and intelligence support all in exchange for furthering moscow's geopolitical goals and gaining access to those natural resources, in many cases, this is typically done via mining concession for accessing gold and johnstone's, and in some cases, natural energy resources as well. peter, what potent and rushes geo political goals and africa. big question, great question. i've yes, natural resources influence, but i want to say politically we can likes to protect different dictators because it's much easier for an interior and regime to work with its own interior regimes.

so i think it's filling the voc in central africa right now. molly? central african republic, fossil molly had a cool and the americans withdrew from there basically because of some legal considerations and so forth. who is feeling? denise, the russians in the chinese chinese are going through the economic sort of, i will even call it economy colonialism. russia will also one so exactly give concessions for the natural resources, but also get control good relations with the world dreams. and if you look also minister of foreign minister love role made several tools because unfortunately, the global south has some, if not sympathy, but understanding for russia as war and ukraine. it's more like i would say

a kind of a protest support because of the anti western into colonial anti american sentiments, even south africa kind of taking a neutral position they are. so lovegrove already went on several tours, so they badly need of support together because that prevents like loop, those 4 postcolonial countries support us on what they present as anti colonial campaign, which is in reality, colonial in ukraine. so it's a very multi face that has been norm and cannot go political consideration ideological consideration. russia never really colonized africa, so there is no sentiment of ah, yes, there is. doors of goes viewer appearance. yeah. the katrina, what, what does africa get out of the deals that it does with, with wagner? so it really is, ah, for a specific subset of countries that are most likely to be working with wagner,

where we've seen these agreements. so as my colleague has mentioned, russia and wagner tends to work with these more authoritarian autocratic regimes. often those like and molly, where you have a military junta that has recently gained power through a coo and so in many of these cases, what the local government is doing. while it's, i'm often under the guise of addressing security needs in the country. whether that's the threat of rebel groups like in the c, a, r, or g hottest, like and molly, actually the goal is really more about securing the regime itself. what we refer to as coo proofing. so they know that they gained power through violent and illegitimate means, and they want to ensure that that doesn't happen again to them. and so there's this mutually reinforcing partnership where wagner is able to ensure the strength mon, jeopardy of the regime. and in exchange, in addition to the financial gains that it's making,

it's also able to secure these geopolitical and military goals. so getting influence for moscow, having the ability to project military and intelligence power on the continent. and really, i think spreading that spreading, that, influencing that power projection to a degree that we haven't really seen since the end of the cold war. you, you mentioned before, sick i level of 2 of africa not too long ago. i mean, how important is african will some of those countries in africa, the support of let me push on it and this war, i think it's symbolic. it's not as important, but they want to show kind of they see how ostracized, they are today from the western community, european communities. so they want to play this card that look the poorest countries in the world or a country. we should been brutally colonized by the europeans

now support us. so they want that kind of moral support, i would say, or i least, i would say not support, but i know to get stuff and have an understanding or the war of which they try to present some kind of crazily anti colonial war. so i won't say it's symbolic rather than really practical, but they also want to have trade. they want to sell arms. they want to support those authoritarian regimes. that's right. but i would say still it's more were ideological symbolic. katrina, if we can just bring it back to the wagner groups role in ukraine before we finish up this program. i mean, what do you think is the future of the group that you think that i go to, you know, keep digging in and, and keep fighting for posting what you think they'll be overrun by other ukrainian forces. i mean, i think that they very well may have sepp acts on parts of the line where they're

over run by the ukrainians. but i don't think that that would lead to their complete removal from ukraine unless it does come down to per goes. and over stepping and being disciplined by pu, and i think that wagner plays a unique role in that russia is not held accountable to the families of the soldiers and recruits who are killed i while serving in the wagner group. they are not responsible for paying out any kind of compensation or benefits to those families. those numbers are not added to their casualty numbers. they help to actually reduce the number of formal russian soldiers who need to be killed if they're able to take control of parts of the line. and so yes, we do see that they have been struggling on parts of the line. they have been really just using recruits eyes, cannon fodder and these waves of infantry that are attacking but ultimately they are also serving both as

a force multiplier for moscow. and they're taking some of the pressure off of the russian military. and given the large number of setbacks that the russian military has faced over the past year and likely will continue to struggle with i think that there are an important component of just reducing the overall negative impact that moscow has experience and during the war. yeah, peter, do you think that person is going to continue using the wagner grouping in the way that he has done that? so going to be a major part of, of his warren. i mean, would it impact you think that i go to have over the next 6 to potentially 12 months? if not longer, you'll definitely will use some kind of a mercenary force, whether it's about in a group. another group where the pre border goes because it's exactly as katrina said, it's a very easy way to have a lot of casualties. and it's also an incredibly easy way to have a very brutal tactics a war when you get, when the morale in the russian army,

as i said in the regular army, is so low. because what a reason for doug is donny boy as to why in the ukraine or a boy from bull react. when all russians from effluent families leave the country unmask? so, the only way to have an effective army to send professional criminals there. this is actually incredible. i don't think it has been done even during world war 2 by fall in. and of course there were reasons that was a just war or the soviet citizens after they were invaded by nazi germany. so. so this is the case. i think a very unique or russian history in terms of brutality or war. and i think you will continue doing that because he sees that the, the war is actually ineffective. so far, not a single major big city has been taken heartily, has not been taken when he has been taken up there fighting the war for the places

. no one have ever heard about 11 but who is not fully taken yet. so yes, as long as you continue the war and he will continue, the war became basically the business of his life. he will use some kind of mercy. norris. ok katrina, i'd like you just before we finish up here to gaze into your crystal ball and one year on from the invasion one year from now. where do you think things are going to stand? yeah, i think it, you know, we're going to continue to see the russian russian failures and increased russian desperation. we've already seen them turn to bringing and of course, the prisoner recruits and others who are conscripted. and in addition to the, those recruited from russian prisons. we've seen particularly wagner pulling recruits from prisons and some of the places it's operating,

including actually taking rebels that they were fighting against that they had imprisoned in the central african republic and shipping them up to ukraine to fight, bringing in recruits desperate for paychecks from some of the other regions where they're active and i think we're going to increasingly see that composition of those forces change and ultimately change in the direction of being increasingly less experienced and increasingly operating based on here of what happens to them if they do not comply rather than any sort of true discipline or military training. and i think that that's just a vicious cycle for russia that will just lead to more losses. ok, thank you so much for your time at all inside story. all 3 of you, peter yelled soft, katrina, doxey and nico overview of thank you so much for joining us. well, thank you to for watching, you can see the program any time again by visiting our website al jazeera dot com, and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. that's facebook dot com,

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