{"id":13014,"date":"2025-04-12T06:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T06:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/13014\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T06:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T06:52:11","slug":"akhmat-the-russian-shadow-army-taking-over-from-wagner-in-ukraine-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/13014\/","title":{"rendered":"Akhmat, the Russian shadow army taking over from Wagner in Ukraine | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wagner Group\u2019s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin<\/a>, died two months after his failed 2023 rebellion against Vladimir Putin \u2014 after having been the Russian president\u2019s trusted confidant \u2014 but his mercenary force did not disappear with him: thousands of Wagner veterans defected to the battalions of his ally against the Russian Defense Ministry, Ramzan Kadyrov<\/a>, the head of the Chechen Republic. <\/p>\n

Prigozhin, who ran a mercenary company and increasingly criticized the handling of the war in Ukraine, died in a plane crash widely suspected of being orchestrated<\/a>. But his rebukes of Moscow remain in the conversations of his former soldiers at a hidden hospital in Luhansk (a territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian forces), members of the Akhmat regiment, named after Kadyrov\u2019s murdered father. \u201cIf there\u2019s one of our hospitals and another belonging to the Ministry of Defense, everyone tries to go to ours because we don\u2019t abandon anyone,\u201d one of their doctors told this newspaper.<\/p>\n

The Russian High Command forced all independent units to integrate into the ranks of the regular army after the Wagner rebellion. However, Akhmat\u2019s special forces still enjoy a degree of autonomy and are largely funded by Kadyrov, who, in addition to maintaining his Praetorian Guard, has gained much greater influence within the army and patriotic circles by expanding his forces with troops that are no longer exclusively Chechen, but rather volunteers from all over Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are one country. From Moscow to the Urals and the Far East,\u201d says Dobrynin, dressed in a medical gown alongside his comrades. He is a tall Akhmat soldier who participated in Operation Pipeline in mid-March during the recapture of the Russian town of Sudzha<\/a>, in Kursk (a region of Russia partially occupied by Ukrainian forces). His unit, made up of around 30 newly enlisted Akhmat assault soldiers under the command of a former Wagner member, broke into the Ukrainians after advancing for six days along an abandoned gas pipeline, devoid of electricity and contaminated with gases and heavy metals. Doctors were shocked to see his white lungs on the scan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it weren\u2019t for our treatment, they would have quickly developed cystic fibrosis and lung cancer,\u201d says Konstantin Florich, the hospital\u2019s commanding officer, nicknamed \u201cBulya,\u201d a Moldovan and former member of Wagner.<\/p>\n

Bulya is responsible for 115 wounded, nine doctors, and a waiting list of more than 1,500 casualties. One of his doctors highlights the differences with other units: \u201cWe found the correct doses and offered our help to the other [Ministry of Defense] hospitals, but only one changed their treatment. Everyone thought they were doing well. We had to take our own patients away because their condition was deteriorating,\u201d he explains, requesting anonymity.<\/p>\n

\"ReportajeDoctors and patients at the hospital run by Akhmut, in Luhansk province. \/ Javier CuestaJAVIER CUESTA<\/p>\n

Flags bearing the face of Kadyrov\u2019s father and Wagner\u2019s skull hang in the hospital rooms. In one rest several members of Rusich, a Wagner reconnaissance group whose emblem is the Black Sun rune and which was founded by Yan Petrovsky, a well-known Russian neo-Nazi. One of his wounded men is Ecuadorian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t fought before, I speak very little Russian,\u201d Oriol, known as \u201c\u00c1guila,\u201d tells EL PA\u00cdS. \u201cI received military training in Ecuador. I came here out of vocation, not ideology,\u201d he explains timidly, amid the jokes of his colleagues. The soldier was sent to the front in December and was shortly afterward wounded in a drone ambush in the battle for Toretsk<\/a>, where he lost his hearing.<\/p>\n

Toretsk, located in the western Donetsk region, is one of the hottest spots in the Ukrainian war. Drones are unforgiving<\/a> in this devastated city and in neighboring Gorlovka, a dozen miles away and populated by civilians. Many soldiers treated at the hospital come from that front.<\/p>\n

A surgeon, nicknamed \u201cDiego,\u201d and a nurse, \u201cMalaya\u201d (Little), remove shrapnel from the leg of Private Kiril Gromov, of the Fourth Motorized Brigade, a former militia from Luhansk. \u201cI didn\u2019t enlist for political or financial reasons, I just wanted to help the wounded,\u201d explains Diego, a military doctor with a year and a half of experience. Now he performs one or two operations a day in the rearguard, but during the Bakhmut offensive, one of the bloodiest battles of the war<\/a>, he operated on up to 10 seriously wounded people a day.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s operation was easy; it was scheduled after the wounded man was stabilized in a field hospital on the front lines. Gromov was surprised by a drone, but managed to throw himself to the ground in time, his backpack protecting him. \u201cThe Ukrainians have changed the drone blades; now you can\u2019t detect them from a distance, you can\u2019t hear that horrible sound,\u201d the soldier explains.<\/p>\n

Zuchara, also a soldier in the Fourth Motorized Brigade, wanders around with a blank stare before being examined using expensive CT equipment paid for by Kadyrov, a device not available in other Defense Ministry hospitals. Zuchara was attacked two days earlier with an unidentified chemical weapon and his right lung was damaged. The young man was evacuated by his comrades; although he managed to escape the toxic cloud, he fainted.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Akhmat, we don\u2019t consider the idea of having unsalvageable patients, soldiers who know for sure they\u2019re going to die. We fight for everyone, we fight to the bitter end for each and every one of them. This is what I like about this unit,\u201d says the doctor treating Zuchara, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

Hospital commander Bulya emphasizes that this is how Akhmat differed from some of the Russian Armed Forces: \u201cIt was like that with Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin]; he visited the wounded and demanded that we prioritize the assault troops. That they be the VIPs, not the top brass. If there were 10 chocolate bars, nine would go to them and one to the doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bulya says that this philosophy has continued after he defected to Akhmat. \u201cApti Aranovich [Alaudinov, Akhmat\u2019s general] called me and asked me to save our guys.\u201d \u201cApti Aranovich, Yevgeny Viktorovich, Grandfather Dmitry Utkin<\/a> [military commander of Wagner, who died on the same plane as Prigozhin]\u2026 These are the kind of people who go all the way and don\u2019t fight for power; they are competent commanders,\u201d Bulya says. \u201cThese are the [commanders] the Russians love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drones kill more than artillery and bullets combined<\/p>\n

The hospital has an armored ambulance that looks like something out of the Mad Max saga due to its modifications. A huge vehicle with 150-kilogram doors, it has been hit by drones five times in 50 trips and has only lost a wheel once. \u201cIt\u2019s a tempting target,\u201d admits Bulya.<\/p>\n

The Russian military insists that the threat from drones, present throughout the war, has become unbearable in the last two months. \u201cI receive virtually no gunshot wounds, about 1% at most,\u201d says Dr. Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrones account for more than half of the deaths,\u201d says Vasili, a drone unit commander with Akhmat, nicknamed \u201cPsij.\u201d \u201cWhen I first saw a drone two years ago, I didn\u2019t know what it was. War has completely changed; it\u2019s more terrifying,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

His unit moves from house to house in the middle of villages to hide from the Ukrainian HIMARS<\/a>. In one, they repair and modify their drones. \u201cKilling a single enemy can save three of our own, plus the costs of training, hospitalization, or family compensation,\u201d says Psij, explaining why it\u2019s profitable to attack a single enemy soldier with a drone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most dangerous drone is the fiber-optic cable drone<\/a>,\u201d notes another Akhmat commander, Fartobi. \u201cElectronic countermeasures don\u2019t affect them,\u201d he adds, before explaining the only current responses to this type of warfare: \u201cTry to remain undetected or flee into the forest. A competent pilot will make you run with your equipment to tire you out before striking.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Akhmat unit has all types of drones, from kamikazes to reconnaissance drones, and has trained more than 1,500 soldiers. \u201cWe observe that other [Russian] forces place less emphasis on practice. We practice with experienced instructors,\u201d Psij emphasizes.<\/p>\n

New recruits take part in a training session in the middle of the countryside. One of the bombs starts a fire in the parched grass. \u201cCan I tell you why I joined the war?\u201d asks Volodya, nicknamed \u201cTiopli\u201d (Warm) and a local volunteer since 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cI joined when Ukrainian forces fired on my village, on my two sons, there was no fighting there,\u201d says Tiopli. Eleven years later, his eldest son is about to turn 18, the age for military service. \u201cI don\u2019t care about pride, I don\u2019t wish my children the fate I suffered, I\u2019m tired,\u201d says the 45-year-old veteran. \u201cFor the Ukrainians, I was a moskal (a derogatory word for Muscovite), and for the Russians, a jojol (a derogatory word for Ukrainian). All of this could have been resolved diplomatically,\u201d he laments.<\/p>\n

For Tiopli, the goal must be peace<\/a>, \u201cnot Kyiv.\u201d \u201cWe want to live freely, but this also depends on Ukraine,\u201d adds Andrei, a twenty-something nicknamed \u201cStudent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wagner Group\u2019s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died two months after his failed 2023 rebellion against Vladimir Putin \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[8877,8874,8875,660,8876,332,333,8873],"class_list":{"0":"post-13014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-donbas","9":"tag-donetsk","10":"tag-kiev","11":"tag-kremlin","12":"tag-ramzan-kadirov","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-vladimir-putin","15":"tag-yevgeny-prigozhin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114323675059925235","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}