More Russian Mercenaries Deploying to Ukraine to Take On Greater Role in War

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/us/politics/russian-mercenaries-ukraine-wagner-group.html

More Russian Mercenaries Deploying to Ukraine to Take On Greater Role in War
At least 1,000 fighters from Russia’s Wagner Group are expected to focus on the Kremlin’s goal of seizing eastern Ukraine.
By Eric Schmitt
March 25, 2022

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The number of mercenaries deployed to Ukraine from the Wagner Group, a private military force with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is expected to more than triple to at least 1,000 fighters from about 300 a month ago, just before the invasion, a United States official said on Friday. The official added that the mercenaries would focus on defeating Ukrainian forces in the country’s Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting a war since 2014, and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine.

Dispatching trusted Russian mercenaries to help with a pivotal part of the Russian invasion underscores the Kremlin’s efforts to regroup and refocus its flagging, monthlong military campaign that so far has failed to achieve Mr. Putin’s initial goals, U.S. and other Western officials said.

Wagner is relocating not only some of its mercenaries in Libya and Syria to Ukraine, but also artillery, air defenses and radar that the group was using in Libya, the official said. The Russian military is supporting these transfers by providing military cargo aircraft to relocate personnel and equipment.

While Wagner’s numbers are tiny compared with the more than 150,000 troops that Mr. Putin amassed on Ukraine’s borders and eventually sent into the country, their presence is an indication that Mr. Putin is taking a page from his playbook in 2014, when the Kremlin deployed Russian mercenaries, mostly veterans of the Russian military, to augment the forces of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.