On Thursday, the agency was included in the Foreign Office’s new sanctions list targeting “strategic industries, banks and business elites”.
How Zelensky survived due to connection of Russian secret services
The charismatic Ukrainian leader standing one step ahead of a ruthless gang of hired assassins also sounds like something a propagandist dreamed of at Mariinskyi Palace (Zelensky’s official residence). Nevertheless, a senior member of the U.S. intelligence community told me that it was true that Wagner’s clowns had “agreed” to kill Zelensky. The source went on to say that it was also true that Zelensky survived, thanks to a leak from Russia’s main security service, the FSB. The Ukrainians were informed not only that an operation was under way to assassinate Zelensky, but also the exact locations of the killers, which led to their arrest. The source said Putin’s anger over the spill was behind the arrests reported last week of the FSB’s foreign intelligence chief and his deputy. My elder calls me again from Germany to tell me that it is important for me to understand that most of the Vagnerovtsi in Kyiv are more interested in getting rich than in killing the Ukrainian government. There is no better-trained or better-equipped mafia in Russia than the Wagner group, he says, and sending them to Ukraine means they can get “100 times” what they made in Moscow. This is due to the opportunities provided by the war to blackmail Ukrainian oligarchs. His friend now in Ukraine told him a story: last week, a black Cadillac Escalade belonging to one of Ukraine’s richest men was stopped by a 0.50 caliber bullet fired at the engine block. The oligarch did not just have bodyguards for protection – he had his own militia. Two pick-ups full of heavily armed men followed behind the Escalade. They could do nothing but watch. In fact, the oligarch was not in the vehicle, only one of his employees. But the message was delivered: “You think you are untouchable. We can pick you up at any time. “ So says my contact in Germany, many oligarchs pay. They may support the Ukrainian government, but they are more afraid of Wagner than of what Zelensky could do if he found out. He goes on: maybe crushing the oligarchs helps Vova [as some Russians nickname their President] and maybe not. But like the men in the French Foreign Legion, the soldiers of Wagner’s fortune believe in “la Légion est notre mère”. They will help the person next to them, but a little more. “They have no faith in a country or an ideology, or even in Putin. “They just want to make money.”
“A gas station run by a mafia disguised as a country”
I could not find anyone to confirm the story of the black Escalade – or that the Ukrainian oligarchs were paying protection money to the enemy in the midst of war. It could be provokatsiya, or just stories from the underworld of Moscow. Others I spoke to, with their own sources within the Wagner Group, described them as true loyalists of Putin. But everyone agreed that at its core, Wagner is a criminal organization. This is not surprising when the Russian state itself is run as a criminal organization. The late Senator John McCain called Russia “a gas station run by a mafia disguised as a country.” A former FSB colonel once explained the system to me: Putin wants something done and the members of the royal court in the Kremlin – oligarchs, generals, lawyers, secret police – are fighting to do it, because when Putin smiles, you understand rich. For the past two decades, Putin’s smile has fallen on an oligarch named Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, as the press will tell you, helps fund the Wagner Group. He always denied any connection to it. Prigogine is known as “Putin’s chef” because he ran what was apparently the Russian leader’s favorite restaurant when he was a humble official in St. Petersburg. Today, Prigozhin’s company serves events in the Kremlin. Although almost certainly a billionaire, we can see him hovering – huge and with a bullet – behind Putin’s chair, like the highest paid butler in the world.
