Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has released his first recruiting video for the Wagner Group since organizing a short-lived mutiny against defense officials in Russia yesterday, according to information on Russian social media channels.
Prigozhin burst into the global spotlight in June with a dramatic, short-lived uprising that President Vladimir Putin said posed the greatest threat to the Russian leader’s 23-year rule.
The Wagner founder benefited from Putin’s powerful patronage, including in building a private army that fought for Russian interests abroad and taking part in some of the deadliest battles of the war in Ukraine.
In the video, a person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader says that the Wagner group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities and “making Russia even bigger on every continent and Africa even more free.”
“We hire real strong men and continue to fulfill the tasks set and promised.”
The worrying news comes just a month after Prigozhin hailed the military coup in Niger as good news and offered the services of his fighters to restore order.
In the video, a person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader says that the Wagner group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities
Yevgeny Prigozhin looks on from a car as he leaves the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don after his short-lived mutiny in June
The speaker in the video – which was posted on Telegram messaging app channels believed to be linked to Prigozhin – can be seen with an assault rifle and in a military uniform.
Pickup trucks and other people dressed in work clothes can be seen in the background.
The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the video or the place and time of its creation.
Russian social media channels linked to the mercenary leader said Prigozhin is recruiting fighters to work in Africa and is also inviting investors from Russia to raise money in the through the Russian House, a cultural center in the African country’s capital create Central African Republic.
The Central African Republic is one of the countries where Wagner’s recruits were active and which have been accused of human rights abuses.
In the video released on Monday, the person who appears to be Prigozhin says that with temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius, Wagner is “making hell hot on ISIS, al-Qaeda and other gangsters.”
The Kremlin has been using the Wagner Group since 2014 as a tool to expand Russia’s presence in the Middle East and Africa.
The Wagner group had extensive operations in numerous African countries, including the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Sudan, Mozambique and Burkina Faso.
Prigozhin criticized Russia’s military performance in Ukraine for months before calling for an armed uprising to overthrow the defense minister on June 23 and setting out from Ukraine for Moscow with his mercenaries.
Under a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to end his insurgency in exchange for he and his fighters being granted amnesty and permission to resettle in Belarus.
Before moving to Belarus, Wagner turned over his guns to the Russian military – part of the Russian authorities’ efforts to defuse the mercenary threat.
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin (pictured) made a surprise appearance at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, just weeks after his mercenary group broke up an insurgency against the Russian Defense Ministry
As the revolt unfolded, Putin branded Prigozhin a traitor and promised harsh punishment, but the criminal case against the mercenary chief on charges of rebellion was later dropped.
Unusually, the Kremlin said Putin had a three-hour meeting with commanders of the Prigozhin and Wagner groups days after the uprising.
Video from July apparently showed Prigozhin in Belarus, but he was then photographed on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Last month, Prigozhin hailed the military coup in Niger as good news and offered the services of his fighters to restore order.
In a voice message on Telegram app channels linked to Wagner, Prigozhin did not claim to have been involved in the coup.
However, he described it as a moment of long-overdue liberation from western colonizers and seemingly offered his fighters a slugfest to help maintain order, suggesting he has plans to expand Wagner’s influence in the region.
“What happened in Niger is nothing but the struggle of the Nigerian people with their colonizers,” reads the voice message posted on Telegram on Thursday – believed to have been recorded by Prigozhin.
“With colonizers trying to impose on them their rules of life and living conditions and to keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago.”
The narrator had the same distinctive intonation and turn of phrase in Russian as the Wagner boss, although it was impossible to confirm with certainty that he was.
“Today this is effectively gaining its independence.” “The rest will no doubt depend on the people of Niger and how effective the governance will be, but the main thing is: they got rid of the colonizers,” the message reads.