Dagens Nyheter: mothers of dead Wagner PMC fighters did not receive documents about their death
Photo: SBU
Wagner's private military company (PMC) did not issue death documents to the families of the killed soldiers. This information was provided by the Ukrainian Center for Analytics and Security to New Lines, Delfi.ee and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Investigators announced the discovery of the graves of four soldiers in Rostov-on-Don, and journalists managed to contact the families of the two victims.
The mother of Evgeny Antipov, a native of Odessa, in June 2017 received a message on social networks from friends of her son, who said that he was dead. According to media reports, Antipov died in the Syrian province of Homs. According to DN, a star is depicted on his tombstone, which, according to journalists, marks the graves of PMC fighters. The mother of the deceased said that she was shown the burial place of her son and asked not to ask unnecessary questions in order to avoid problems. Antipov's father Yuri, in turn, said that his son is still wanted in Ukraine, and there is no official data on his death.
At the cemetery in Rostov-on-Don, the grave of 21-year-old Mark, a native of Kharkov, was also discovered. According to his mother Natalya, in 2017 he said that he became a peacekeeper in Syria, while she clarified that his son had no military training. The woman was not present at the funeral, she was only shown the grave of the deceased, there is also no official death data.
Employees of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) provided the journalists with a database, on which they had been working for several years, with the names of four thousand Wagner PMC fighters. According to this information, most of the fighters are Russians. Over 200 people from Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Moldova also serve in the PMC.
In September 2020, the American Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) revealed the chronology of the spread of Russian PMCs in the world since 2014. Then it was reported about the presence of Russian mercenaries in African countries such as Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Botswana, Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of the Congo.
