(01.03.2024)
2018 gehörte Wirecard zu den 30 wertvollsten deutschen Unternehmen, 125 Milliarden Euro an Geldtransaktionen fließen über den Dienstleister. Darunter sind auch Zahlungen deutscher Behörden, etwa Überweisungen an V-Leute. Sicherheitskreise äußern die Sorge, Wirecard-Finanzdaten könnten auch an ausländische Dienste geflossen sein. Ein riesiges Sicherheitsrisiko, das bislang nicht einmal ansatzweise behördlich aufgeklärt wurde.
(Aug 05, 2023)
ECOWAS Defence Chiefs finalised an intervention plan and urged militaries to ready resources. However, the Niger junta has threatened ‚devastating consequences‘ in case of an intervention. Watch this video for details.
(August 2, 2023)
General Salifou Mody, one of the Niger officers who seized power in a military coup last week, visited Mali on Wednesday, according to the Mali presidency, amid speculation of a possible interest in the Wagner mercenary group, which has a presence in the country.
Mali’s transitional president, Assimi Goïta, hosted Mody and a large Nigerien military delegation on Wednesday, according to pictures and a statement posted on Facebook by the Mali presidency.
(03.05.2023)
Die Bundeswehr will aber auch nach dem Abzug aus Mali in der Sahel-Region präsent bleiben – mit steigender Entwicklungshilfe im Rahmen einer neuen Sahel-Strategie, sowie militärisch im Nachbarstaat Niger. Mit bis zu 60 deutschen Soldatinnen und Soldaten will sie sich an einer EU-Mission zur Ausbildung der nigrischen Streitkräfte beteiligen.
Zusätzlich sind vier österreichische Bundesheerangehörige im Rahmen der EU-Ausbildungsmission EUTM in Mali. Diese sei von der Entscheidung völlig unberührt, sagte das Verteidigungsministerium.
Bowing to the principle that peacekeepers need the consent of the host government, the Security Council voted unanimously to start immediately winding down the mission despite fears by Western powers of new instability in the troubled nation.
The vote came two weeks after Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop stunned the Security Council by calling the UN operation known as Minusma a „failure“ and urging its immediate end.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has reportedly stressed that the Wagner mercenary group will have no role in guarding Russian tactical nuclear weapons that are being transferred to his country.
A state-run news agency in Belarus cited Lukashenko as saying on Tuesday that a substantial amount of Russian nuclear weaponry has been moved into the country.
(…)
The report said Lukashenko denied such views, saying, „It is our job. And I am personally responsible for the security of the weapons.“
On 15 November Mykhailo Podoliak, Ukrainian presidential advisor, said that Nuzhin had agreed to participate in prisoner exchange.
A source in Ukrainian army told BBC that Nuzhin was returned to Russia in exchange for twenty Ukrainian servicemen freed from Russian captivity. The source, as well as journalist Ramina Eshakzai, who interviewed Nuzhin, both opined that as soon as they could get Ukrainian soldiers in exchange, they did not care what happened to Nuzhin.
(14 November 2022)
Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin said unverified footage of Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, being struck with a sledgehammer was „a dog‘s death for a dog“.
The convicted murderer announced in September he had changed sides.
In the video he says he was hit on the head while walking in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and woke up in a cellar.
(December 22, 2021)
The snuff film Apostol took part in was filmed and uploaded in 2017, although it didn’t gain a wide viewership until two years later. Last week, it was cited by the European Union in its decision to sanction the Wagner Group as a whole, along with three companies and seven individuals connected to it, for “serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan and Mozambique, which include torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings.” Brussels also named Wagner’s commander, Dmitry Utkin, a former GRU officer, as the man responsible for Bouta’s torture and the recording made of it.
(November 20, 2019)
The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta has published new evidence in the torture and beheading of a man in Syria, whose gruesome death was first revealed in a two-minute video released on June 30, 2017. At the time, observers speculated that the Russian-speakers pounding the man with a sledgehammer and chopping at his body with knives and shovels were possibly mercenaries from the “Wagner” private military company. Earlier this month, Novaya Gazeta acquired an additional two videos from the murder scene, and the newspaper says the new footage bolsters suspicions that Russian mercenaries were behind the killing.
Wagner private military company boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has left Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don in southwestern Russia, new video, posted to Telegram and geolocated and authenticated by CNN, shows. CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh reports.
The abrupt about-face follows a rare, remarkable challenge to the Kremlin that threatened to plunge the country into crisis and destabilize its already stumbling war efforts in Ukraine.
The threat of civil war leaves the country – and the Putin regime – in a very different place Sunday than it had been just two days prior. And with Russia possessing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, that instability has other nations on edge, prompting emergency meetings and high-level talks.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed that Prigozhin, a Saint Petersburg tycoon who made his initial fortune in catering, „will go to Belarus.“
He added that Wagner‘s fighters will not be persecuted, taking into account their efforts on the frontlines of the Ukraine conflict. Peskov explained that President Vladimir Putin‘s team „have always respected their exploits.“
PMC contractors who refused to take part in the mutiny – and whole units did not – will be allowed to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry, Peskov stated.
Die Vereinbarung sei vom belarusischen Staatschef Alexander Lukaschenko vermittelt worden, sagte Peskow. Dieser habe seine Hilfe angeboten, da er Prigoschin seit etwa 20 Jahren persönlich kenne. Putin habe dem zugestimmt.
Evgeny Prigozhin agreed to halt his march on Moscow and avert “a bloodbath,“ the Belarusian president said
(…)
4/Unlike strategic weapons, which require codes from the President, the Minister of Defense, and the Chief of the General Staff to launch, tactical weapons have only rudimentary PALs (Permissive Action Links) to secure them from unauthorized use.
Fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin‘s private Wagner militia were in control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine, and were rapidly advancing northwards through western Russia.
A Reuters journalist saw army helicopters open fire at an armed Wagner column that was advancing past the city of Voronezh with troop carriers and at least one tank on a flatbed truck.
A truck transporting a military vehicle of Wagner private mercenary group drives along M-4 highway, which links the capital Moscow with Russia’s southern cities, near Voronezh, Russia, on June 24, 2023 in this still image taken from video.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary Wagner group, claimed to have control of several important military facilities in southern Russia in the city of Rostov-on-Don. Video verified by The New York Times shows that he had entered a key military complex on Saturday morning.
As the Wagner troops were said to be driving into the Russian city of Rostov, Mr Prigozhin said that his mercenaries were greeted by border guards.
He said young conscripts at checkpoints stood back and offered no resistance, adding that his forces „aren’t fighting against children.”
(23.06.2023)
The chief of Russian mercenary group Wagner has accused Moscow’s military leadership of ordering attacks on their camps and killing a “huge” number of forces.
“We were ready to make concessions to the defence ministry, surrender our weapons,” Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a furious audio message released by his spokespeople.
“Today, seeing that we have not been broken, they conducted missile strikes at our rear camps.”
„Today, at 12 noon, Bakhmut was completely taken,“ Prigozhin said in a video in which he appeared in combat fatigues in front of a line of fighters holding Russian flags and Wagner banners. „We completely took the whole city, from house to house.“
Ukrainian military spokesperson Serhiy Cherevatyi told Reuters: „This is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.“
(10 October 2022)
Although fairly small in number, it has prompted speculation that there may have been some Russian involvement in the events that saw Captain Ibrahim Traoré seize power in a nation beset by growing jihadist violence. (…)
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, has been more forthright in his observations: „Our people helped the new leader [of Burkina Faso].
„Another African country will move from co-operation with France to an alliance with Russia.“
(Jan 25, 2022)
One of the Burkina Faso president’s final acts in office was refusing to sanction the use of Russian paramilitaries on his soil.
The leader of this week’s successful military coup against him was the very man who tried to pressure him into accepting help from Moscow, sources in the former president’s camp told The Daily Beast.
The head of Russia‘s Wagner private army says it is not getting the ammunition it needs from Moscow, as it seeks to gain control of Bakhmut.
The eastern city has seen months of intense fighting, as Wagner and regular Russian troops try to seize it.
But Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin says his army‘s lack of ammunition could be „ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal“.
In dem seit Monaten andauernden Kampf um die Stadt Bachmut hält die ukrainische Armee nach eigenen Angaben weiterhin den Angriffen der russischen Invasoren stand. Der ukrainische Generalstab erklärte gestern, am Vortag seien „mehr als 130 feindliche Angriffe“ abgewehrt worden, insbesondere in Bachmut, Kupjansk, Lyman und Awdijiwka.
Die Einnahme der ukrainischen Stadt Bachmut durch Russland könnte bald bevorstehen. Der ukrainische Verteidigungsminister Olexij Resnikow schloss einen Fall der seit Monaten schwer umkämpften Stadt durch die russische Söldnertruppe Wagner in einem aktuellen Interview nicht aus.
(01.03.2023)
In his state of the nation speech delivered on Tuesday, Putin seemed to address the infighting.
“We must get rid of … any interdepartmental contradictions, formalities, grudges, misunderstandings, and other nonsense,” he told the political and military elite.
In a post later in the day, Prigozhin said he had been too busy to watch the speech and could therefore not comment on the president’s remarks.
Russland vor der „aggressiven Propaganda der antirussischen Thesen des Westens“ zu schützen.
Als Trolle werden Internetnutzer bezeichnet, die bewusst Onlinediskussionen stören und die Atmosphäre in Chatrooms vergiften.
The JMC concluded its meeting in Cairo, which lasted for two days, with the liaison committees from Chad, Sudan and Niger, approving the establishment of an integrated mechanism for joint coordination and data exchange to facilitate the full withdrawal of mercenaries and foreign fighters from the country.
Der einflussreiche General Chalifa Haftar ließ Kämpfer aus dem Tschad, dem Sudan, dem Niger und der russischen Gruppe Wagner für sich gegen die von der UNO anerkannte Regierung in Tripolis kämpfen. Hunderte Wagner-Söldner halten sich nach wie vor in Libyens ölreichem Osten und im Süden auf. Im Westen sind türkische Soldaten stationiert, um libysche Soldaten auszubilden.
(11.08.2022)