Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Russian private military company Wagner, confirmed to the American media the participation of former Afghan soldiers in the Ukrainian war.
Moscow, March 3 - Sangar, Talib Aliyev. Meanwhile, to date, no credible evidence or evidence has been presented of the presence of former Afghan soldiers in the ranks of Russian or Ukrainian forces. A few months ago, Sangar had information about this, but the editors refrained from publishing it.
The press service of the commander of the Wagner forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, confirmed in writing to the American website Semafor that Afghan military specialists trained by the Americans were recruited into the ranks of his personal army.
“Yes, indeed, Afghan fighters of the Wagner PMC work for us in small numbers. Now an artillery unit is operating, which at one time was trained to work on American artillery systems, M-777 howitzers, plus it works with Javelin anti-tank missile systems, etc. - what we manage to buy back from Ukrainian units, or captured ones,” writes Prigozhin's press office.
According to Semafor, hundreds if not thousands of elite Afghan security officials volunteered to join Ukraine's foreign legion, but their request was rejected. The website says 300 Afghan soldiers have applied to the United Legion, a private Ukrainian government website that processes documents of foreign mercenaries, and of these, 150 have been accepted into the Ukrainian Armed Forces' International Legion.
However, Semafor, citing its own sources in the Ukrainian government, writes that the reason for refusing to involve the Afghan military is the possibility of infiltration of spies, since "the Russian Wagner group is busy recruiting former military personnel in Kabul."
Meanwhile, one of the former soldiers of the Crisis Response Unit (SRU 222), which was the most elite and professional unit of its time in Afghanistan, told Sangar that when going to fight in Ukraine, the former Afghan military just wanted to leave Afghanistan or Iran and Pakistan.
“Everyone tried to get to the US and Europe through Ukraine. For this reason, in the questionnaires of the Ukrainian company, they falsely wrote that they wanted to fight against Russia, which "once invaded Afghanistan" and wanted to "support democracy and freedom in Ukraine." In fact, they were all tired of the war, were abandoned by the Americans to their fate and just wanted to find shelter, since they are still hunted by the Taliban, who kill them without trial or investigation,” he said.
According to him, as soon as they reached Ukraine, these soldiers fled their places of service and ended up in Europe, joining the continuous flow of Ukrainian refugees.
“For this reason, although they say that Afghans are participating in the war in Ukraine, there is no basis or evidence, and the Ukrainian authorities also realized this and stopped recruiting Afghans,” he added.
Meanwhile, although the commander of the Wagner troops confirmed the presence of Afghans in the ranks of his troops, not a single photo or video of them has yet been published.
Afghan commandos of the Ukrainian war
Russia's recruitment of former Afghan soldiers for the war in Ukraine is not new. Between October and November last year, a “law firm cooperating with the Russian Embassy in Iran” launched a campaign of “educational migration” to Russia in the Iranian cities of Mashhad, Isfahan, and Tehran.
However, according to one eyewitness, among the afghan migrants who gathered in front of one of the high-rise buildings in the Ilahiya district of Tehran, few looked like a student.
A well-informed source “Sangar said that at that time about 25 thousand people expressed their readiness to go to Russia for the war, and they were promised a monthly salary of $ 1,500 and Russian citizenship.
“It was said that two - Haibatullah Alizai, a former special forces commander and the last commander of the general staff of the Afghan army who spoke Russian and lived in Russia, and one of the former jihadist commanders - cooperated with the Russian private company Wagner in this recruitment. The exact number of those hired is not known, but it is estimated up to 2,000 people”, the source said.
Then the Wagner press service denied this news, and now, when its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin confirms the presence of Afghans in the ranks of his private army, he proves their reality.
Prior to this, a similar action was launched by the Ukrainian Embassy in Iran, but, apparently, it was not successful. According to Sangar's sources, Hashim Rais, one of Marshal Abdurshid Dostum's associates, who came to Iran from Turkey to implement this program, was arrested and released eight months later.
Iran de facto supports Russia in the Ukrainian war, although it officially denies this. Only the provision of Shahed drones, which have shifted the balance of the Ukrainian war in favor of Russia, is the most prominent example.
A foreign mercenary army called the "International Legion" operates in the Ukrainian war, which, according to various sources, recruits about 20,000 people from about 50 countries of the world.
The private military company Wagner, under the command of Russian billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, began its activities in the war in Syria in 2014. Now it is considered one of Russia's strike forces in the war in Ukraine and the strongest private military company in the world, which has all kinds of forces, including artillery and aircraft. Its fighters, mostly contract soldiers, even prisoners, are poetically called "musicians" playing on the bloody stages of Ukraine, Syria, and Africa.
