More than 400 Russian mercenaries are operating in Kyiv with orders from the Kremlin to assassinate President Zelensky and his government and prepare the ground for Moscow to take control, The Times has learnt.
The Wagner Group, a private militia run by one of President Putin’s closest allies and operating as an arm-length branch of the state, flew in mercenaries from Africa five weeks ago on a mission to decapitate Zelensky’s government in return for a handsome financial bonus.
Information about their mission reached the Ukrainian government on Saturday morning and hours later Kyiv declared a 36-hour “hard” curfew to sweep the city for Russian saboteurs, warning civilians that they would be seen as Kremlin agents and risked being “liquidated” if they stepped outside.
A source closely connected to the group’s activities confirmed that a total of between 2,000 and 4,000 mercenaries had arrived in Ukraine in January. Some were deployed to the disputed eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Another 400 entered from Belarus and made their way to the capital.
The mercenaries have been told that Putin wants a brief pause to show that he is negotiating with Zelensky, but assured them that no deal would be reached and that the effort would be simply “smoke and mirrors”, according to a source close to senior members of the Wagner Group.
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Zelensky agreed yesterday to send a delegation to meet a Russian team at the Belarus border but expressed scepticism about Moscow’s seriousness.
The mercenaries are awaiting a signal from the Kremlin and have been promised hefty bonuses for killings in the next few days and safe passage out of Ukraine before the end of the week.
• Listen to the Stories of Our Times podcast: The Russian mercenaries stalking Zelensky
In addition to Zelensky their hit list contains 23 other figures, including the prime minister, the cabinet, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir, both popular former boxing champions who have joined the military fight against the invaders.
The mercenaries boast of knowing exactly where the president and his colleagues are in Kyiv and are apparently able to track them via their mobile phones. After Moscow invaded last week, Zelensky addressed the nation, claiming that Russian special forces were in the capital searching for him as “target No 1”. Offered the chance by America to flee, he said: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Wagner has also been preparing the ground for an invasion, helping to guide Russian columns to Kyiv and locating and planning assassinations that would decapitate the Ukrainian government.
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Although Wagner is a private military company, it has been closely associated with Putin’s projects around the world. It is owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch known as Putin’s chef. They have conducted covert operations across Africa and the Middle East and were also responsible for fomenting trouble in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
“They are very effective because they are hard to pin down,” General Sir Richard Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, said. “They can appear from the shadows, do very violent things and then disappear again, without it being obvious who was responsible. They are not directly linked to the Russian government and therefore they are plausibly deniable.”
They also appear to be more trusted by the Kremlin than regular Russian forces. Sources said they had been briefed about the planned invasion of Ukraine in December, long before the Russian army was told. The mercenaries claim that there were concerns that if Russian soldiers had known they would have refused orders and that several had been executed for doing so.
Operations to hunt down “saboteurs” in Kyiv resulted in several killings and arrests. After reports of Ukrainian military vehicles being hijacked by Russian special forces, the authorities in the southern city of Kherson warned that a thousand uniforms had been stolen from a warehouse, fuelling fears that more Russian soldiers would seek to infiltrate Ukrainian cities disguised as friendly forces. A group of Chechens found moving around Kyiv in a hijacked ambulance were apprehended by Ukrainian military intelligence officers and “partly shot, partly detained”, the Interior Ministry said.
