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A Russian mercenary who gained notoriety for butchering prisoners of war and civilians in the Donbas has been killed fighting in Ukraine.
Vladimir Andonov, 44, a sabotage and reconnaissance specialist in the ranks of the shadowy Wagner Group, was shot by a sniper near Kharkiv during a night-time mission on June 5, Russian media says.
Andonov was known to Russians as ‘Vakha’ or ‘the volunteer from Buryatia’ after the region he was from, but to Ukrainians he was ‘the executioner’ due to massacres he helped carry out during Russia’s first invasion of the country in 2014.
Vladimir a soldier with the notorious Wagner Group, was shot dead by a sniper during a reconnaissance mission near the city of Kharkiv on June 5
Andonov (left and right) was known to Ukrainians as ‘the executioner’ for carrying out massacres of prisoners of war and civilians during Russia’s first invasion in 2014
The 44-year-old death was confirmed to Russian media by the leader of Buryatia region, where he lived, who said his body is now being returned home
Putin loses his 50th colonel in Ukraine
Russia has lost its 50th colonel of the war in Ukraine in the latest hammer blow to the Kremlin, with the death toll now soaring past 31,000.
Artillery commander Lt Col Vladimir Nigmatullin, a 46-year-old father-of-three from Yekaterinburg, was killed on May 31, it has now been revealed.
Nigmatullin’s death has been confirmed to his family, adding to the huge list of casualties of Russia’s military leaders, with one colonel killed every two days.
It comes after Vladimir Putin lost two of his most senior commanders in a single day in a devastating bridge ambush in eastern Ukraine, a group of independent journalists claimed.
Nigmatullin’s sister-in-law Marina Konyukhova said: ‘Eternal memory, darling, dear, much-loved man, you passed away.
‘We still cannot believe you are gone. You are a father of three children, and an amazing husband to my sister.
‘I am always proud of you, and I will always be proud. You set an example to the Motherland, so that everyone does like you did.
‘You were ordered with the Order of Bravery, posthumously. You went through a lot of conflict areas.’
His death was confirmed by Zhambal-Zhamso Zhanaev, head of the region where Andonov lived, who spoke to Russian newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets.
Zhanaev told the paper that Andonov’s body is now being sent back from the front to his home region for burial, along with that of another soldier killed alongside him.
Andonov is thought to leave behind a wife and at least two daughters, according to previous interviews he did with Russian media.
The soldier – born in 1978 in the Trans-Baikal Territory in Russia’s far east – had served in the regular Russian military from 1997 until 2005, when he moved to the city of Ulan-Ude and began studying at a teaching college.
Buthe dropped out of school before completing his studies and got a job in trade, before answering a call for volunteers to go to Ukraine and join the fighting in 2014.
Andonov was drafted into the Olkhon special forces company fighting in the Donbas, and took part in the Battle of Debaltseve in early 2015 – one of the last major battles of the initial war.
At the time, he appeared in a video filmed in the region which became one of the first pieces of evidence that volunteers from the Buryatia were in Ukraine.
Ukraine accuses him of personally participating in the massacre of prisoners of war in the town of Logvinovo in the aftermath of the battle, and of killing civilians elsewhere in Donbas.
Andonov remained in Ukraine on the frontlines even after full-scale war ceased with the signing of the 2015 Minsk Agreements, before returning to his home region some time in 2017.
But at the end of that year he vanished, having deleted all trace of himself online, and for the next several years was thought to be fighting as part of Wagner units deployed to Syria and Libya.
Wagner mercenaries have gained a bloodthirsty reputation for fighting the battles that Russia’s regular military cannot – participating in massacres, torture and indiscriminate killings along the way.
Thousands of mercenaries – often drawn from the ranks of the regular army – are thought to be deployed to warzones in South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
When fighting restarted in Ukraine in February this year with Putin’s order to invade, Andonov was deployed again to the frontlines.
It is unclear where exactly he had been fighting before he met his death near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday.
Andonov was killed as Ukraine launched a fresh counter-attack in the region, pushing Russian forces further back towards their own border.
Andonov had served in the regular Russian army for several years before rejoining the military as a mercenary after failing to complete teacher training
Andonov was drafted into the Olkhon special forces company fighting in the Donbas in 2014, before going back to fight in Ukraine in February this year
Kharkiv is located around 120 miles north of the current Donbas frontline, and Russia had intended to capture the city to use as a logistical hub to supply troops there.
But, after more than three months of fighting, the city remains in Ukrainian hands with Putin’s men having all-but abandoned efforts to take it.
Meanwhile heavy fighting is ongoing in Donbas, concentrated on the city of Severodonetsk which is under heavy bombardment from both sides.
Control of the city continues to shift, with Ukraine launching a large-scale counter-attack that retook large parts of the city at the weekend before a Russian push on Monday forced Kyiv’s men back again.
Capturing the city will give Russia control over almost the whole of Luhansk province and tee up an assault on Lysychansk, which sits just across the Donets River on the other side of a large industrial zone.
Failing to take Severodonetsk would see Russia’s eastern offensive – now the focus of its war since the failure to take Kyiv – grind to a halt, and perhaps even reverse if the fighting leaves Putin’s forces too weak to hold the territory they have captured.
Such attacks are already underway in the south, with territory to the west of the occupied city of Kherson being contested.
A limited Ukrainian counter-attack has seen troops cross the Inhulets River and capture a smattering of towns on the eastern shore, but fail to make significant in-roads into occupied territory.
Andonov was killed north of Kharkiv amid a Ukrainian counter-attack that has pushed back Russian forces which had been bombarding nearby towns
Ukrainian volunteers help exhume the body of a civilian killed in fighting north of Kharkiv following Russia’s invasion of the country
Rapes, murders and war crimes dominate the shadowy history of the Wagner Group which is fighting for the Kremlin in Ukraine
The notorious Wagner Group, a private military company known as ‘Putin’s private army’, has been linked to a string of rapes, robberies, murders, and war crimes across the globe.
Widely considered to be at the beck and call of the Russian leader, the shadowy group claims no official allegiance – allowing it to operate in regions Russia’s regular military cannot, using methods that even Moscow’s soldiers are forbidden from.
Wagner is said to have been tasked with assassinating Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian figures, including the Klitschko brothers, early in the Ukraine war. It is also thought to be deployed in South America, Africa and the Middle East.
In December, the EU accused Wagner of ‘serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique’.
The force has already been heavily involved in supplying weapons, special operations personnel, and military training to pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.
The army-for-hire is allegedly run by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin – a close ally of the Kremlin who is often dubbed ‘Putin’s chef’.
The Wagner Group (pictured in Syria) has conducted covert operations across Africa and the Middle East, including in Syria, and they have most recently been on the ground in Ukraine to guide Russian tanks to the capital
Wagner’s exact origins are a mystery, though it first caught international attention fighting in Donbas during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Initially, it was made up of only a few hundred Russian army veterans. They were tasked with assassinating Donbas leaders who were broadly supportive of Russia, but had refused to follow instructions from the Kremlin.
These assassinations were then blamed on Ukrainian forces, according to security experts, to whip up hatred of Kyiv.
Wagner’s founder and leader is Dmitry Utkin, a shaven-headed former lieutenant colonel in Spetsnaz who named the unit after his special forces code name.
Utkin is seen as a neo-Nazi and was described by one Russian newspaper as having ‘an appreciation of the aesthetic of the Third Reich’.
Mercenaries are illegal in Russia but Putin used Wagner to crush Syrian rebels and even awarded Utkin a medal.
In 2020, investigative news site Bellingcat uncovered records revealing Wagner’s reputed boss Prigozhin had made 99 calls to Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff in eight months
Eventually, however, the Wagner Group became so dangerous that even the Russian government refused to pay them.
This led to Putin appointing oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin to control the group.
For Western observers, Wagner Group’s links with the Kremlin are in little doubt. Putin himself has been pictured at a Kremlin function with Wagner troops including lieutenant colonel Utkin.
In 2020, investigative news site Bellingcat uncovered records revealing Wagner’s reputed boss Prigozhin had made 99 calls to Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff in eight months and frequently spoke to top officials at the Kremlin.
The Kremlin once again denied it has any influence over Wagner and suggested that Prigozhin only provides catering services to the Russian government.
Wagner Group has been involved in fighting across Africa, including in Syria, Libya, Mozambique and the Central African Republic – with observers noting the close correlation between their actions and the Kremlin’s own policy aims.
In 2017, Wagner employees tortured a deserter from the Syrian army. Sickening footage showed how they broke his legs with a sledgehammer and then crushed his chest, before cutting off his hands, his head and finally setting his corpse alight.
In 2019, a man who filmed the torture and beheading was identified as Stanislav D, a soldier who was known to have been employed by Wagner in the country to help prop up its Kremlin-backed dictator, Bashar Assad.
In Libya, the BBC obtained a Samsung tablet owned by a Wagner fighter which revealed the group had been leaving unmarked mines in civilian areas – a war crime.
The investigation also uncovered a ‘shopping list’ of weapons and military equipment, including four tanks, hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles, and a state-of-the-art radar system.
A military analyst said some of the equipment could only have come from the Kremlin.
Shocking revelations also emerged about the conduct of Wagner fighters, with one former member openly admitting to killing prisoners because ‘no-one wants an extra mouth to feed’.
Meanwhile, one Libyan villager described how he played dead as his relatives were killed around him.
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin (pictured left) is nicknamed ‘Putin’s chef’ because of his catering business which supplies services to the Kremlin
Wagner’s appearance in Mali was one of the reasons given by French president Emmanuel Macron for his decision to pull out 2,400 troops from the country, where they had been fighting jihadists.
Mr Macron suspected the mercenaries had struck a deal with Mali’s ruling junta.
He said Wagner was ‘arriving in Mali with predatory intentions, but why?’
‘Because the junta which is in power after two coups d’états considers them to be the best partners they can find to protect their power, not to fight against terrorism.’
Wagner fighters were welcomed into the Central African Republic (CAR) by President Faustin-Archange Touadéra to assist in his fight against rebels.
Over the course of the campaign, both the UN and France said they had been responsible for raping and robbing unarmed civilians in the country’s rural areas.
In total, the UN documented more than 500 incidents in the country during the year from July 2020, including sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and torture.
Although inspectors accepted some of the violence had been carried out by rebels, CAR’s Justice Minister Arnaud Abazene acknowledged for the first time that some abuses had been carried out by ‘Russian instructors’.
One military source told AFP that more than 50 people died, some in ‘summary executions’.
In 2018, three Russian journalists reporting on Wagner’s activities in CAR were ambushed and shot dead. Another Russian journalist investigating the group ‘fell’ to his death from his fifth floor flat.
Wagner has also been involved in operations against ISIS in Syria and Mozambique.
In Mozambique, seven mercenaries were killed by ISIS-linked militants – including four who were shot and then beheaded.
Both attacks were ambushes in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado state, according to sources in the country’s military.
The Times reported that between 2,000 and 4,000 Wagner Group mercenaries arrived in Ukraine back in January, but with different missions.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, said: ‘They are very effective because they are hard to pin down.
‘They can appear from the shadows, do very violent things and then disappear again, without it being obvious who was responsible. They are not directly linked to the Russian government and therefore they are plausibly deniable.’
Sources said the militia were briefed about Putin’s plans against Ukraine back in December, long before the Russian army was told.
Boris Johnson today urged NATO to act ‘harder’ against Russia to end the war ‘faster’ as he unveiled a wave of new sanctions – which include the Wagner Group.
The Wagner Group are among the targets in the latest set of measures, announced as the PM arrived in Brussels for talks with the military alliance.
There are claims the notorious mercenaries have been tasked with assassinating Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian politicians.
The new sanctions cover individuals including billionaire oil tycoon Eugene Shvidler, founder of Tinkoff bank Oleg Tinkov, Herman Gref, and Polina Kovaleva, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s alleged stepdaughter.
Galina Danilchenko, installed by Russia as the ‘mayor’ of Melitopol has also become the first person sanctioned for ‘collaboration with Russian forces’ in Ukraine.
Six more banks have also been sanctioned, according to the Foreign Office.
As he arrived in Brussels, Mr Johnson said: ‘We’ve got to step up. We’ve got to increase our support.
‘We’ve got to tighten the economic vice around Putin, sanctioning more people today, as we are, sanctioning the Wagner Group, looking at what we can do to stop Putin using his gold reserves, and also doing more to help the Ukrainians defend themselves.
‘We’re moving, really, from a programme of supporting resistance to supporting the Ukrainian defence of their own country.’
Mr Johnson is calling on countries such as Germany and France to ramp up their response, warning that the military alliance must not be ‘diverted’ by mounting nuclear threats from Moscow.
He suggested that Russia should be prevented from using gold reserves to prop up its economy – and also dismissed a bid to host the 2028 Euro football tournament as ‘beyond satire’.
Ahead of the NATO meeting – being attended by Joe Biden – the premier announced the UK is giving Ukraine 6,000 more missiles and £25million to support its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion.
Reports have long claimed the force is Putin’s personal assassination squad, but are far enough removed to afford the Russian president plausible deniability.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and the presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak have been listed as among other alleged assassination targets.
Mercenaries were reportedly given a 24-person ‘kill list’ including the entire Ukrainian cabinet, mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir – both boxing champions who have become iconic figures on the front lines of the capital.
The attack was sabotaged after the plans reached the upper echelons of the Ukrainian government on March 5, prompting Kyiv to declare a 36-hour ‘hard’ curfew, ordering everyone indoors so that soldiers could sweep the streets for Russian saboteurs.
More than a dozen attempts are said to have been made to kill Mr Zelensky since Russian troops launched a savage invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Mr Johnson said this morning: ‘Vladimir Putin is plainly determined to double down on his path of violence and aggression, absolutely brutal the way he’s treating the Ukrainian people.
‘We’ve got to step up, we’ve got to increase our support, we’ve got to tighten the economic vice around Putin, sanctioning more people today as we are.
‘Looking at what we can do to stop Putin using his gold reserves and also doing more to help the Ukrainians defend themselves.’
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss – who is also attending the NATO summit – said in a statement: ‘These oligarchs, businesses and hired thugs are complicit in the murder of innocent civilians and it is right that they pay the price.
‘Putin should be under no illusions – we are united with our allies and will keep tightening the screw on the Russian economy to help ensure he fails in Ukraine. There will be no let-up’.
All those sanctioned will have UK assets frozen and be subject to travel bans.
The Foreign Office said the total global asset value of the sanctioned banks to £500billion while oligarchs and family members hit are worth more than £150billion.
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