As its shock troops battle to storm the defenses of the strategic Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian private military contracting firm the Wagner Group is coming under fire on different fronts. news from the central african republic states that an airfield used by the Russian mercenary unit came under bombing attack from an unidentified jet fighter on Monday. Separately, us media report that Washington, seeking pressure points on Moscow, is considering dubbing the Wagner Group – widely alleged to be a deniable operations unit that carries out the Kremlin’s dirty work both near and far – a“foreign terrorist organization.” But none of these matters were what raised the hackles of Douglas Nash, a US historian who was putting the finishing touches to a new book covering nazi germany’s most notorious combat unit , when he viewed recent Ukraine war news. “When I saw it, I was appalled,” Nash, a retired US Army colonel and himself a veteran of three wars, told Asia Times. The footage that stunned Nash was of Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s chief executive, speaking to assembled prisoners in the yard of a Russian penitentiary. The ex-felon, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin, was offering the prisoners pardons in return for six months of frontline service with the Wagner Group in Ukraine. Nash, himself a US Army combat veteran and retired colonel, was appalled for two main reasons. First, the newsreel made clear how murderous the fighting in Ukraine has been for Russia’s regular forces. “It dawned on me that the Russians must have suffered a far higher casualty rate than they have admitted,” said Nash, a Pulitzer nominee whose recent works have covered armored warfare and Germany’s Waffen SS on World War II’s Eastern Front.“Taking in ‘volunteers’ from prisons is an act of desperation.” Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin’s operations, including the Wagner Group private military company, are believed to be closely intertwined with Kremlin interests. Image: Facebook Having formerly recruited ex-members of elite Russian units, Wagner now seeks lower-grade fodder to feed to the cannons outside embattled Bakhmut. (…) The second thing that triggered Nash was the practice of recruiting imprisoned criminals for combat recalled the practice of the historical figure who is the central personality in his upcoming work: Dr Oskar Dirlewanger, a Nazi officer who recruited criminals to don SS uniforms and fight in the ranks of the eponymous Dirlewanger Brigade. Dirlewanger was a tough, veteran soldier – and an alcoholic, a sadist, a convicted child rapist and a likely psychopath. His unit has rape, torture and mass murder to its discredit; so vile was its behavior that it is difficult to write about its excesses even today.
via menafn: WWII’s Nazi Ghosts Haunt And Torment Ukraine
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