A veteran Russian politician and former army commander called for a crackdown on the country’s notorious private military company, Wagner Group, as tensions rise over its role in the invasion of Ukraine.
Viktor Sobolev, a former lieutenant general in the armed forces who now sits as a Communist Party MP, branded the mercenary outfit “an illegal armed formation” in a statement on Tuesday.
“It is not clear where [the Wagner Group] is registered and what it does,” Sobolev said. He warned regular soldiers defecting into its ranks could face up to 15 years in prison.
Moscow outsourced much of the fighting around the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to Wagner in recent weeks. The group’s founder, oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, accused top generals of failing to supply his troops in a series of furious attacks on the top brass.
The Washington Post reported on Monday leaked documents revealed Prigozhin may have offered to give information on Russian army positions to Kyiv in exchange for a Ukrainian retreat from Bakhmut.
“The conflict between Prigozhin and Russian ministry of defense is escalating, it seems,” said Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.
However, in a video apparently shot in war-torn eastern Ukraine, three men identifying themselves as Wagner combatants hit back at Sobolev, accusing him of undermining the invasion and threatening to rape him on Red Square.
