Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office service notices of suspicion to Prigozhin

The Prosecutor General's Office has served a notice of suspicion to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group private military company (PMC).

Source: Prosecutor General's Office on Telegram  

Quote from the Prosecutor General's Office: "The head of the Wagner PMC is charged with encroaching on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine and waging a war of aggression (Art. 110.3, Art. 28.2, Art. 437.2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine)."

Details: The pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings is carried out by the National Police.

It is reported that the head of the Wagner PMC is directly responsible for thousands of war crimes.

According to the investigation, Prigozhin was empowered to recruit, train and manage his subordinates for further use in combat operations on the territory of Ukraine. All this happened with the full support of the current Russian regime.

The Prosecutor General's Office stressed that ordinary Wagnerites, even those who fled abroad, will not escape responsibility either.

It is noted that prosecutors have already interrogated two such fighters who are in the EU.

The investigation into the involvement of another PMC member in war crimes, who is in Norway, is also underway. A request for investigative action will soon be sent to our Norwegian colleagues.

"The hammer of justice is always stronger ‘the sledgehammer of anarchy’",  summed up the prosecutor’s office.

For reference: The Wagner PMC was founded in 2013-14. The Wagner Group's mercenaries were actively involved in several countries where Russia has important interests, such as Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine. It was reported that the Wagnerites committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and were particularly cruel.

After the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the Wagnerites took part in massacres against civilians. The PMC recruits convicts from Russian prisons, as well as Ukrainians who were imprisoned in the temporarily occupied territories. Prigozhin himself is often engaged in recruitment, and only in September 2022 he admitted that he was behind this PMC.

A sledgehammer is a kind of symbol of the Wagnerites. Prigozhin's mercenaries have been using sledgehammer killings since the war in Syria. On the Internet, you can find evidence of how, in 2017, in Syria, the Wagnerites beat a person to death, quartered his body and burned it.

In November 2022, Russian Telegram channels published a video of the execution of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a former inmate of Ryazan Penal Colony No. 3 and a member of the Wagner PMC, who surrendered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine after being sent to war in Ukraine; the man's head was smashed with a sledgehammer.

Subsequently, the Wagner Group decided to transfer a "blood-stained" sledgehammer in a violin case to the European Parliament. This is how Prigozhin reacted to the news about the possible recognition of his PMC as a terrorist organisation. 

In January, the United States recognised the Wagner PMC as a transnational criminal organisation.

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