US believes Wagner mercenary group is expanding influence and took delivery of North Korean arms - CNN

CNN  — 

Newly downgraded US quality suggests the Russian mercenary radical Wagner has assumed expanded power and is recruiting convicts – including immoderate with superior aesculapian conditions – from prisons to supplement Moscow’s flagging military.

The radical precocious took transportation of arms from North Korea, a apical US authoritative said, a motion of its increasing relation successful the warfare successful Ukraine.

And the US believes Wagner could beryllium locked successful a powerfulness conflict with the Russian subject itself arsenic it jockeys for power with the Kremlin.

“In definite instances, Russian subject officials are really subordinate to Wagner’s command,” said John Kirby, the strategical communications coordinator astatine the National Security Council. “It’s beauteous evident to america that Wagner is emerging arsenic a rival powerfulness halfway to the Russian subject and different Russian ministries.”

The revelations astir the Wagner radical came a time aft Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s historical sojourn to Washington, wherever helium thanked the United States for its subject assistance and said much was needed to fend disconnected Russian advances.

Wagner has emerged arsenic a cardinal subordinate successful the 10-month conflict. The radical is often described as President Vladimir Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its instauration successful 2014, and has been accused of warfare crimes successful Africa, Syria and Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the US applied caller restrictions connected Wagner’s entree to exertion exports.

Kirby said the US estimates Wagner presently has astir 50,000 unit deployed wrong Ukraine, of which 40,000 could beryllium convicts recruited from Russian prisons. He said the radical was spending $100 cardinal per period to money its operations successful Ukraine.

The group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has adjacent traveled personally to Russian prisons to enlistee convicts himself to spell to the beforehand lines and fight. Some of them endure from “serious aesculapian conditions,” Kirby said.

“It seems arsenic though Mr. Prigozhin is consenting to conscionable propulsion Russian bodies into the nutrient grinder successful Bakhmut. In fact, astir 1,000 Wagner fighters person been killed successful the warring successful conscionable caller weeks, and we judge that 90% of those 1,000 fighters were, successful fact, convicts,” Kirby said.

Prigozhin, who has sometimes been referred to arsenic “Putin’s chef,” already has adjacent ties to the Russian president. But Kirby suggested helium was moving to fortify those ties done his efforts to bolster Russian forces done his mercenary recruitment.

“It’s each astir however bully helium looks to Mr. Putin, and however good he’s regarded astatine the Kremlin,” helium said. “In fact, we would spell truthful acold arsenic to accidental that his power is expanding.”

Last month, Wagner received a transportation of infantry rockets and missiles from North Korea, Kirby said, an denotation of however Russia and its subject partners proceed to question ways astir Western sanctions and export controls.

Wagner, not the Russian government, paid for the equipment. The US doesn’t judge it volition importantly alteration the battlefield dynamic successful Ukraine – but suggested North Korea could beryllium readying to present further material.