Tablet found on battlefield in Libya revealed details of mysterious and bloodthirsty Russian mercenary group Wagner

They are like murderous ghosts. Little is known about them, but they leave behind a trail of death, torture and other crimes wherever their services are required. Now, Tablet forgotten or lost on battlefield reveals details of Russian mercenary group Wagner and how they work for the highest bidder.

The organization got its start during the war in Ukraine in 2014, where it supported pro-Russian separatists. He gained prestige in 2016 in operations against the Islamic State group. It currently operates in the Central African Republic (where it oversees diamond mines), Chad and other African countries. Corn the electronic device was found in western Libya, where Wagner was deployed on covert operations in support of the renegade Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, against the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The Samsung tablet has fallen into the hands of the chain BBC, which he believes he was left behind during his retirement in spring 2020. Upon his transfer to London, journalists put him in a bag that blocks signals to prevent him from being tracked or erased from a distance, and set to work to analyze its content.

To the surprise of British journalists, it was easy to unlock the equipment. Journalist Nader Ibrahim found dozens of files such as military manuals, drone images and books as diverse as A game of thrones O my battle or a guide to make wine.

Much of the information was in a battlefront maps app (south of Tripoli), all with annotations in russian, where the fighting took place between February and May of last year.

The red dots on the plans marked the names of possible mercenary colleagues. One of them, “Metla”, was identified by the BBC What Fedor Metelkin, 36, a former member of Wagner who has joined the ranks since the conflict in Ukraine.

The Black dots on the maps mark another deadly legacy in the region: anti-personnel mines in the heart of the residential district. The tablet also contains illustrations of explosives, of Russian origin, which could not be purchased by Libya due to the arms embargo in force for a decade. These weapons had already been highlighted in a Human Rights Watch report on the crisis in the country.

To corroborate this data, the BBC I’m speaking with two former members of Wagner They spoke on condition of anonymity and confirmed that many mercenaries who were in Ukraine then moved to oil-rich Libya, where at least 1,000 permanent fighters from the Russian group were located between September 2019 and July 2020.

The sources also explained what the membership process looks like. It is not that they are recruited directly as mercenaries, but that sign short-term contracts with shell companies as security personnel in sensitive locations, such as oil rigs. Before starting, they undergo physical tests and security background checks and are trained near Krasnodar in southern Russia a short distance from a Russian army base.

If they pass the assessments, they are sent abroad with A word of warning: if they die, their bodies will not be repatriated.

The most common is that these are people who cannot join the Armed Forces due to a criminal record. According to the analysis of the BBC, usually come from small towns with few opportunities, attracted by a salary up to 10 times higher than the average.

“They are like modern Vikings. Whenever there is an armed conflict somewhere, Wagner’s soldiers talk about it. “We could go to this one, this could be one for us. “Because every contract and every country is money. If you don’t have a contract, you stay there in the reserve with no money, ”one of the sources told the British channel.

Wagner does not have a code of conduct and the most common is that prisoners are executed because there is no point in feeding him without benefit.

Corn there’s something mercenaries don’t usually talk about: who finances them. “It’s like in Harry Potter, where Voldemort is the name that is never spoken out loud. It is a taboo subject ”, he explained to the BBC one of the sources, warning that talking about the matter puts you at risk of being executed.

However, the tablet also shed light on the opaque funding of an organization that, on paper, does not exist in Russia, with activities banned in the country and internationally.

It’s a 10-page document, a “shopping list” of military materiel, weapons and state-of-the-art equipment that is virtually unobtainable for non-state actors, indicating support at the highest level. The file is dated January 19, 2020, the same day Vladimir Putin attended a conference in Berlin on a peace process for Libya.

Security expert Chris Cobb-Smith has been asked by the BBC to analyze the details of the case. “I highly doubt that any other private military company – if Wagner can be qualified as such – has anything close to the support it appears to have here. This implies not only access to a substantial budget, but also the authority for access to the latest sensitive technologies, otherwise secret. Wagner appears to be little more than an unofficial part of the Russian military», He affirmed.

Regarding funding, another document obtained by the BBC from 2019, on deployments in Mozambique to replace damaged equipment, is addressed to Evro Polis, a Russian company designated as beneficiary of contracts for the exploitation of oil and gas fields in Syria.

Everything indicates that Wagner’s fighters were no longer in the area where the tablet was found, but local sources say they remain in the country and are destabilizing peace efforts despite the declared ceasefire.

When Vladimir Putin was asked in 2020 if there were any Russians fighting in Libya, he simply replied: “If there are Russian citizens there, they do not represent the interests of the Russian state, and they do not receive money from the Russian state. . “

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