The opening was recently announced on social media by Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin. Wagner has also deployed mercenaries to countries in Latin America, Africa and Syria.
The new Wagner plant should provide “a comfortable environment for generating new ideas to improve Russia’s defense capabilities,” Prigozhin said in a statement. Last month, Prigozhin put an end to years of rumors when he admitted to founding the group.
The leader of the infamous Wagner mercenary group is now said to exert as much political influence in the Kremlin as Russia’s foreign and defense ministers. That’s what the former Russian oligarch and dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky told the British government. The force and its leader are also playing an increasingly important role in the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
It is thanks to the mercenaries that fewer Russians are required to be mobilized. “But these mercenaries are engaged in terrorism and murder,” Khodorkovsky warned the British government. According to the Russian dissident, it is an easy way for Putin to deny his responsibility. After all, the Wagner group has no official link with the Kremlin.
