Ukraine Hits Russian Wagner Mercenary Base In East

Ukraine has struck the headquarters of Russia’s shadowy Wagner paramilitary group of mercenaries in eastern Ukraine.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that a Ukrainian strike hit a Russian base in eastern Ukraine that housed mercenaries from a private military group with close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Ukrainian officials have claimed.

Reports of a strike in the Luhansk region on a base for the organization, the Wagner Group, began to emerge on Sunday night when a channel on Telegram that is widely associated with the group posted pictures that purported to show the site of the strike.

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Wagner first emerged in 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea. U.N. investigators and rights groups say Wagner troops, which have been seen in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic, have targeted civilians, conducted mass executions and looted private property in conflict zones.

Wagner’s shadowy existence allows Russia to downplay its battlefield casualties and distance itself from atrocities committed by Wagner fighters, according to those who have studied the group.

On Monday morning, Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Ukrainian regional military administration in Luhansk, asserted that the Wagner base in Popasna had been “destroyed.”

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine again successfully struck the enemy’s headquarters,” Mr. Haidai wrote in a Facebook post, adding that the number of casualties was not yet known.

There was no immediate comment from the authorities in Russia or from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the secretive businessman and Putin ally widely associated with the private security company.

Reports of the strike infuriated many Russian military bloggers, who criticized an earlier social media post by one of their own. That post, they said, had exposed the headquarters’ location. The post has since been deleted.

“Congratulations to all decent war reporters, it will be even harder for us to work now,” Dmitri Steshin, a reporter for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular pro-Kremlin tabloid, wrote on Telegram. “And it will be easier for those who criticized us.”

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Russia has tried to make up some of its manpower shortages in Ukraine by using mercenaries from Wagner, which gained prominence as it deployed to help accomplish the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals in Syria and various African nations.

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