A Ukrainian Perspective on the Wagner Revolt

we want to go to Kiev as well where we're joined by Dennis Pelos Ukrainian political scientist historian member of the Ukrainian Democratic Socialist organization he's also an editor at Commons Journal of Social criticism Dennis pilash thanks for joining us again but certainly under very different circumstances how was this Rebellion um if it is a short-lived Rebellion or is it the beginning of something perceived in Kiev

we just played the president zielinski addressing Russians and Russian soldiers in Russian which is actually his first language saying same is so first of all we should say that even when Russia was caught by this Rebellion Mutiny attempt of a coup still Ukrainian cities have been attacked by Russian missiles as usual as they have been in recent two months almost constantly so we had uh people

a civilians killed in Kiev in her son and other places so uh ultimately not much has changed in in terms of this war on on ukrainians including ordinary civilian ukrainians but lots of people were uh completely agreeing with this take that Russia's militarism now is reaping uh what it's so so it brought death and destruction to Ukraine and now the same Boomerang comes back to um

to Russia itself namely in this uh the same entities the Wagner group and like private military companies throughout the world Wagner was established and as an arm for uh Shady sneaky dealings or with superiors namely the Russian State and Putin's regime um and also giving them this plausible uh deniability for all these deeds and as a rule this pmcs they display a much less legal and

moral constraints and regular armies and thus they commit more war crimes just think about any software Massacre by Blackwater in Iraq but Wagner specifically uh whose command is stalked by a notorious open Nazi sympathizers um like it's founder rootkin so it turned their extremely brutal way of awaiting wasting human lives almost to a brand that was promoted by state propaganda so uh their constant war crimes

committed in Syria in Ukraine in African countries they include executions of civilians prisoners of War of their own men they include rape and sexual violence as they include um things like torture and extra judicial killings of ukrainians in kivoblist and this massacre of hundreds of people in murah in Mali and both were occurred almost simultaneously like in Spring uh 2022 so uh Wagner group is also

heavily implied to have killed Russian journalists who went to investigate their dealings in the Central African Republic and also to have eliminated um those of um this pro-russian eradic Warlords in in donbas in eastern Ukraine that were deemed no more useful for for for the Kremlin so uh this is the way uh they they were doing this their regular activities abroad and uh you can just

imagine what they can do to uh Russia the people of what's now Russia Confederation itself so in Africa they engaged in some kind of 19th century type uh colonialism pillaging communities looting national resources and installing military dictatorships and actually I think that there were lots of um parallels lots of analogies that emerged in in Russian and Ukrainian social media concerning uh what can be compared to

this uh short-lived Mutiny of uh preguigence forces and uh Lots were uh brought up but I think that's the closest one uh was exactly uh what you have already mentioned in the news about the uh the recent and ongoing uh conflict in Sudan where um a part of uh of the ruling military Junta namely um this rapid support forces formerly is a genjavid a militias that

were involved into genocidal acts in Darfur they broke with the rest of the Junta and both these sides they are equally oppressive equally anti-democratic and both are Wagner clients so here we see this parallel and I completely agree with uh Professor who showed us that this is a way where you see an extremely uh oppressive authoritarian regime and uh it's it was opposed at this Point