The Russian mercenary group Wagner led by Yevgeni Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and considered by the United States to be an unofficial armed wing of the Russian Army in various parts of the world, has opened its first official headquarters in the city of St. Petersburg.
«The PMC Wagner Center is a cluster of buildings with places for inventors, project developers, IT specialists, experimental manufacturers and various startups,» according to Prigozhin’s statement, picked up by ‘Ostorozhno Novosti’. «The mission of the PMC Wagner Center is to provide a comfortable environment for generating new ideas to improve Russia’s defense capabilities,» Prigozhin explained in the statement.
Prigozhin acknowledged last month that he had founded in 2014 this «group of patriots» that now functions as a network of Russian mercenaries and paramilitary specialists in Africa and Latin America, although the Russian government has never officially admitted any relationship.
The inauguration of this headquarters is considered as a staging before the public of an organization whose leader is known for regularly criticizing the military commanders leading the war against Ukraine.
«Prigozhin is now willing to publicly describe his functions in a way that he has not been able to do in the past,» Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the U.S. think tank RAND Corporation, told the ‘Moscow Times’.
