Governor Serhiy Hayday wrote on Telegram<\/a> that Ukrainian forces “hit an enemy HQ whose whereabouts were established thanks to a Russian journalist”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n“This time, the successful strike destroyed the Wagner PMC HQ in Popasna yesterday,” he said. He added that “the number of dead is being clarified”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Wagner group was deployed to Crimea and Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014, when Kremlin-backed forces ousted Ukrainian troops from areas they later declared to be part of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wagner units have also been sent to Syria, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Kremlin does not acknowledge Wagner’s existence, but Western intelligence links the group to Yevgeny Prigozhin – nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because his catering business has long helped President Vladimir Putin and the armed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Prigozhin, like many other Russian officials, is subject to Western sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wagner is known as a PMC – private military company. But they are state-sponsored mercenaries who act in the Kremlin’s interests, Western experts say. They have been accused of repeated war crimes and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC News: Ukrainian artillery has struck a headquarters of Russia’s shadowy Wagner paramilitary group of mercenaries in eastern Ukraine, reports say. The extent of damage to the military base of the group – which has been linked to war crimes – is not clear. Luhansk’s governor claims its secret location was revealed after a Russian journalist shared its address. Last week, pro-Kremlin correspondent Sergei Sreda posted a photo on Telegram of the base with its apparent address. The image, shared on the social media site but since deleted, shows five people in military uniform with a street sign in Popasna,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26526,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26524\/revisions\/26526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}