Russian private military company Redut is recruiting mercenaries including former fighters from the Wagner Group under the guise of “volunteers,” U.K. defense intelligence said in an update released Monday.
The memo said Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU, likely finances and supervises the group’s activities and added that Redut has been involved in combat in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Luhansk regions since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“It is a realistic possibility that the Russian ministry of defense’s practice of recruiting through ‘volunteer’ units has contributed to Russia avoiding further unpopular mobilization,” the British update said.
Redut was established in 2008 by Putin-linked oligarch and former KGB agent Gennady Timchenko to safeguard his gas empire, according to a former senior Russian army officer and Wagner operative in evidence submitted to the U.K. House of Commons foreign affairs committee last month, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The group, which “highly likely” has more than 7,000 personnel, according to the British intel report, rose to prominence after Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin‘s aborted mutiny in June against Putin.
Two months later, a private jet carrying Prigozhin and his top lieutenants crashed northwest of Moscow, killing everyone on board. Putin said Wagner mercenaries could sign contracts and swear an oath of allegiance to Russia.
Wagner had been active on the battlefield in Ukraine and Syria, and its feared mercenaries were also used to shore up Russia’s interests across Africa. In June, Putin said the Kremlin had financed Wagner to the tune of $1 billion in the past year alone.
