Politico Op-ed: Russia’s Bloody Sledgehammer

Note: This op-ed was originally published in Politico and was written by The Sentry’s Justyna Gudzowska, Director of Illicit Finance Policy, and Nathalia Dukhan, Senior Investigator.

Russia’s Bloody Sledgehammer

Biden can do far more to counter the Wagner Group mercenaries terrorizing Ukraine.

Last November, a snuff film began to circulate online depicting the gruesome murder by sledgehammer of a former member of the Wagner Group, a private military outfit closely linked to the Russian state. If such execution videos bring to mind the grisly tactics of ISIS, the similarities don’t stop there: Like ISIS before it, Wagner engages in extreme violence and is now actively recruiting foreign fighters to join its armed campaigns in numerous countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, has left a trail of death and destruction in every place it has operated since 2014, including Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali…

Read the full op-ed in Politico.