where thousands of ill-equipped Russian forceshave died on the front linessince the end of last year. Many of those fighters have not been enlisted Russian soldiers, but mercenaries recruited and paid by the Wagner Group,
all fighting for their own piece of the prize. Lots of vested interests focused on their own aims, no cohesive unit. Many have cheered this on. “Oh, look, I am getting something. I am important.” In their stupidity, egocentricity, they have brought ...
Once one of Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s closest advisors, he had been sidelined after mercenaries under his command seized control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on June 23, 2023, in the strongest challenge to Putin’s presidency since Russia’s invasion of ...
In one case, he reportedly obtained a $200 million kickback from Dassaut Aviation, and in another, a Swiss court convicted him of money laundering.In Libya Muammar Gaddafi draws on a vast, ill-gotten fortune to import mercenaries.Drug cartels challenge governance in Mexico by corrupting police...
"That's in the back of his [Putin] mind that a similar deal might be possible for him going forward," says Steele. How has Wagner impacted the war in Ukraine? Military coup The attempted coup by Wagner mercenaries - said to be aimed at Russia's military leaders rather...
2014. In the second wave there were a lot of mercenaries from the Wagner group. Now he says, roughly one-third of the pows are jailbirds like Andrey, who were recruited into so-called Storm-Z penal military units, a third are men who have been mobilised, and a third are regular ...
(twice) and fought in Syria. His mercenaries have deployed to Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and now Ukraine. Mr Putin is a global bully obsessed with his country’sinadequacies. Contrast that with China, which also has ambitions, but has so far been able to get results using ...
Agis III had accepted ten ships and money from Persia to hire 8,000 mercenaries (Diod. 17.48.1, Curt. 4.1.39), with which he occupied Crete, and so in late 331 Sparta was able to mobilise a fairly formidable force. Then in the same year Memnon, the general of Thrace, and in comman...
During this period, Moscow did not intervene. President Vladimir Putin not only withdrew his troops, but also forbade an oligarch to send mercenaries to support the people of Donbass. The latter have been abandoned by the guarantors of the Minsk agreements and by the other members of the Secur...
crooked diplomats and small-time thugs who keep militaries and mercenaries loaded with arms. The vast aftermarket in arms had grown exponentially after the end of the Cold War. For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe f...