‘A New Level’: Reports Link Russian Mercenaries Wagner to Massacre of Civilians

Mercenaries from Wagner, a private military company with close links to the Russian government, may have committed significant war crimes in Mali, according to UN experts. 

International rights groups and observers have frequently accused Wagner of human rights violations and the wanton targeting of civilians in Libya, Mozambique, Central African Republic and other African nations. In March 2022, the company was accused of conducting massacres in Mali after arriving at the behest of the Malian government in 2021.

“We are particularly worried by credible reports that over the course of several days in late March 2022, Malian armed forces accompanied by military personnel believed to belong to the Wagner Group, executed several hundred people, who had been rounded up in Moura, a village in central Mali,” the UN experts said in a report published on the 31st of January.

The March incident in Moura, according to investigators from both the international media and human rights groups, killed hundreds of people in a five-day military operation including large numbers of civilians, who were allegedly targeted for belonging to the minority Peuhl ethnic group. Wagner’s forces – the UN estimates as many as 1,000 mercenaries are deployed by the company in Mali – had accompanied Malian forces on the operation.

Sorcha Macleod, former chair of the UN's working group on mercenaries, told VICE World News: “We’ve seen mass killings and other human rights atrocities in CAR, allegedly by Wagner operatives, but the Moura massacre in Mali takes it to a new level in terms of the sheer numbers of people murdered and abused.”

The experts cited by the UN include representatives and special rapporteurs of human rights groups that investigate torture in conflict, as well as a UN special working group studying the use of mercenaries around the world.

The warning came as the Kremlin-affiliated company comes under increased scrutiny by the US, which recently designated the group as a transnational crime organisation. Meanwhile, legal proceedings on behalf of its alleged victims in Ukraine and Africa have begun in civil court in the UK.

The UN report said there was evidence of Wagner’s involvement in a number of incidents in the regions of Mali where the central government has battled a miasma of jihadist groups and other rebels for over a decade. 

“We are disturbed by the apparent increased outsourcing of traditional military functions to the so-called Wagner Group in various military operations, also encompassing operations defined as counter-terrorism, including in Nia Ouro, Gouni, and Fakala,” the experts added.

A French-led international anti-terrorism force deployed to Mali has begun to withdraw substantial numbers of troops, which had been deployed since 2013 to counter the regional jihadist threat, after the government cancelled a long standing military agreement with France, the former colonial power, last year.

Wagner’s presence in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of convicts have been recruited from Russian prisons to fight against the Kyiv government, has come under increasing scrutiny as its owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has openly criticised the performance of the Russian military and its leadership in the war. But Africa is where the group has truly established itself, often in exchange for mineral rights and other natural resources. Many observers consider it an exploitative, destabilising situation, and say it is run like a state-sponsored paramilitary.

“Combining hard and soft power, Wagner’s forces are destabilising poorly governed regions, like the Sahel, through wanton human rights abuses, rapacious resource extraction and covert disinformation efforts that meddle in the internal politics of the countries where they operate,” wrote Colin Clarke, a former US intelligence official in an op-ed in the New York Times.

The US designation, which seizes any Wagner assets in the US as well as making it illegal for Americans to do business with the company, was officially released last week by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Asset Control.

“Wagner personnel have engaged in an ongoing pattern of serious criminal activity, including mass executions, rape, child abductions, and physical abuse in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali,” said the OFAC designation. 

The US also designated numerous companies and individuals believed to be affiliated with the group in Russia and the United Arab Emirates for providing support to the company’s operations in Africa and Ukraine. 

“I don’t think Prigozhin will be hurt by this designation right away as he doesn’t do any business in the US because of previous sanctions related to Ukraine and the Kremlin, but it’s a way to send a message to any other country interested in doing business with Wagner that such a move will have a terrible effect on relationships with the US and Europe,” a NATO official told VICE World News on background.

“It’s going to be a multi-spectrum fight to limit Wagner’s ability to operate outside of Russia and involves private legal cases like in the UK, as well as government actions both obvious - such as the OFAC designation – and covert via intelligence style operations. But those things… nobody will talk about [them] for now.”