The US has Wagner’s internal plans in hand: NATO country’s weapons scandal

According to the online leak of top secret US documents about the situation in Ukraine, it appears that the US had access to the internal plans of the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner, which, among other things, tried to buy weapons from Turkey, a NATO member country . As reported by the Washington Post, referring to classified documents that surfaced online, in early February Wagner’s people “met with Turkish contacts to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey for operations in Mali and Ukraine.” The report also states that the acting chairman of Mali’s military junta, Assimi Goita, “confirmed that Mali can acquire weapons from Turkey on behalf of Wagner”.

It is not clear from the documents whether and to what extent the Turkish government was aware of the attempts by Russian mercenaries or whether they were successful. “But the revelation that a NATO ally may have aided Russia in its war against Ukraine could be explosive,” writes the Washington Post, “particularly as Turkey sought to block Sweden’s entry into the alliance.”

A Turkish government spokesman declined to comment on the newspaper’s leaks. Mali’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from the American newspaper. Two more pages of the leaked intelligence file discuss Wagner’s plans to recruit Russian prisoners to be sent to the front lines in Ukraine and point out that the Russian military now relies on mercenaries. Like the report on meetings involving Turkey, these files also refer to sources as coming from “signals intelligence”, a reference to electronic and communications intercepts. Authorities generally consider them to be one of the most productive ways of gathering information, but they are potentially perishable if revealed.

Source: IL Tempo

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