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Wagner mercenaries at a spontaneous memorial service in Saint Petersburg (August 24, 2023)

Photo: Artem Priakhin / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO

According to media reports, Ukrainian special forces are operating in Sudan to support the country's army against Wagner mercenaries. According to the Guardian, this emerges from a video published on Monday. The Russian Wagner Group is apparently fighting in Sudan alongside the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Kyiv Post published the short video, which it said came from Ukrainian military intelligence. It shows a captured Russian soldier being interrogated along with two African men. According to the Guardian, the Russian soldier says in the video that he belongs to the Wagner group and that he came from the Central African Republic. Fighters from the Russian group are stationed there to “overthrow the local government” with a force of around 100 men.

Video follows months of speculation

The video follows months of speculation that Ukrainian forces are operating in Sudan to sabotage Russian activities. The location and content of the video have not yet been independently confirmed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Sudanese de facto head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Ireland in September. "We discussed our common security challenges, in particular the activities of illegal armed groups financed by Russia," the Ukrainian president said at the meeting.

In Sudan, the RSF of the former deputy ruler Mohammed Hamdan Daglo has been fighting for power in the country against the armed forces led by de facto head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since April 2023. The RSF emerged, among other things, from Arab equestrian militias that were accused of systematic, severe violence against the Masalit ethnic group in the Darfur conflict at the beginning of the 2000s. Already this summer, the UN found evidence of renewed crimes against Masalit, including mass graves. Hundreds of thousands of people from Darfur have fled across the border into neighboring Chad.

Media reports suggested that the RSF was supported by Wagner mercenaries. The Wagner Group had regrouped under strict Kremlin control after the death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

aka/czl/dpa