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The private military company “Wagner” is outside the legislative field of Russia and, rather, is an illegal armed group that is involved in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. Daavr Dorzhin, a lawyer from the Human Rights Center “Memorial,” said this today, November 7, on the air of the FREEDOM TV channel.
“I would draw your attention to the fact that Russian legislation does not know the concept of a “private military company”, unlike, say, American legislation. And the enterprise, which, as he himself claims, is managed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, because he constantly goes to court about his connection with this organization, is, in fact, not very legal, because since there is no such concept in Russian law, it would be difficult to talk about some kind of legal activity. Therefore, we are talking, of course, about an illegal armed formation, which, moreover, participates in military or hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. And, accordingly, this is a war crime in a good way, and Prigozhin himself can be a war criminal in this sense,” said the lawyer.
In his opinion, Prigozhin became the demiurge of war and now plays a key role in informal political ties.
“Why? Because he is formally neither a deputy, nor a minister, nor any kind of civil servant, even a military man. I’m not sure I ever served at all, really. And on the other hand, this is a person, respectively, who can carry out some assignments. And since the current structure of power cannot cope with such tasks, such a person who has paramilitary formations, who has financial and economic resources, can cope with these tasks perfectly well. I cannot comment on the successes of his Wagner army in the field of the front, I am not a military expert. However, I can say that this structure, apparently, works extremely effectively, at least from the point of view of Moscow, because he is too active, he is too trying to go beyond what we usually saw in relation to him,” said Dorzhin.
The Wagner Private Military Company, headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, has announced the creation of centres for “training and command of the people’s militia” in Kursk and Belgorod regions of Russia. According to Prigozhin, the “militia” should consist of residents of these regions, and local businesses should be involved in the provision of the units. The “training centres” will be financed by Prigozhin himself.
Recently, the PMC Wagner Centre, linked to businesses owned by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, also known as “Putin’s chef”, has started operating in St. Petersburg.
