2023-06-29 08:13:50
Dmitry Valerievich Utkin He has the hanger of a prisoner forgotten in the dungeon. Crown shaved to zero; thick nose, like that of a retired boxer; abrupt features… Two tattoos, one on each side of the neck, highlight a natural rudeness of those that neighborhood thugs exude. He is definitely a tough guy. Enough, to have forged in 2013 the Wagner Group that Yevgeny Prigozhin leads today. The difference between the two is his attachment to the cameras. Until his exile in Belarus like Napoleon in Elba, the latter adored the warmth of the spotlights and the tingling of putting the powerful in check through the screen. Utkin, for his part, prefers the security that the shadows give him.
mysterious past
His past is the same as his present: dark. It was lit in June 1970 – it is difficult to trace the specific day, although it seems to be the eleventh – far from the most iconic cities of that old Soviet Union. The then socialist republic of Ukraine, the same land where thousands of combatants give up their lives today, was the one that saw him born, grow up and feel attracted to the armed forces. For them, and for the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler. In fact, one of the two tattoos that can be seen on his neck shows the two typical lightning bolts of the SS, the most ideological and bloodthirsty forces of the Third Reich. Bitter paradox when, from the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin calls to denazify Ukraine.
The weight of his life was carried by the militia, and Wikipedia does not say so, but rather by his wife for two years. In an interview given in 2016 to a Russian television channel, Elena Shcherbinina confirmed that where most was fought for was in the two wars in Chechnya, that lost region of the North Caucasus that faced Russia in the 1990s with suicide attacks, kidnappings of civilians and barbarism. Elena recounted that they both fought together there – “Yes, me too” – and that it was in one of those battles to the death in which her ex-husband obtained his first decoration: “The militants took a colonel prisoner, and ‘Dima’ and his fighters recaptured it.” That was the first recognition of many others; among them, four Orders of Courage.
According to Elena, once back in Russia, her ex-husband was assigned as a reserve commander to the 700th Special Forces Unit of the 2nd Separate Brigade of the Ministry of Defense Special Forces. A name as long as the days that have passed since the outbreak of the Ukrainian War, but easy to summarize: Utkin was a Spetsnaz, among the deadliest special operations commandos in the world. “This organization was unknown until 1983, when a high Soviet military command sought political asylum and discovered its existence,” explains ABC in the eighties. A golden retirement waiting for some conflict to break out.
The return to Mother Russia did not sit well with him. Her new destination in the city of Petchory, where he planned to live calmly with Elena, he promised, but found himself longing for the jingle of bullets. «She had a hard time adapting because she was worried about not fighting. He wanted a career as a combat officer, not as a cleaning officer in a barracks, “explained her ex-wife. If that stirred him up, her family did more. «At that time we broke up because of his mother, who had a great influence on him because his father had died. He lived between two fires. His mother was obsessed with him returning to Ukraine ». He resisted a decade in the barracks, until the end of 2012, but one day he left.
Nace Wagner
Utkin exchanged the placid life for that of the mercenary. University professor specializing in organized crime Mark Galeotti is in favor of his joining the call slavic body. “It was a Hong Kong-based front company that was looking for veterans to protect Syrian energy facilities by offering a salary that, by Russian standards, was splendid: $5,000 a month,” insists the expert in his work ‘Putin’s Wars’ . Those security tasks did not last long. Soon after, this highly controversial guy moved with the group to Syria, where he fought on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. There were, in total, 267 contractors divided into two companies.
The Slavic Corps was a path of thorns. Poorly equipped, without government help, they returned to Russia without having played any role in the conflict. And, to top it off, Russia received them with interrogations and imprisonment, since the legislation prohibited fighting as a mercenary… (yes, you can believe it). Utkin evaded punishment – he had a knack for it – and founded his own mercenary group. The name he used was his radio callsign: Wagner. Hitler’s favorite composer, by the way. This Ukrainian and former Spetsnatz did not make the same mistake and registered the group in Argentina. No one could hunt him anymore.
Utkin, during one of his last public appearances on ABC
On paper, the Wagners were born in the separatist east of Ukraine back in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent asymmetric offensive launched by Russia against kyiv. And from those powders, these muds. Paid for by the tycoon Evgueni Prigozhin. Known as ‘Putin’s cook’, his operators have fought in Libya, Sudan and the Central African Republic, among others.
“It feeds on former Russian fighters. Mainly from the Chechnya campaign, where they gained experience,” explains the researcher and expert in special units José Luis Hernández Garvi to ABC. The essayist reveals that the soldiers “come from special units such as the popular spetsnaz” and that, while Western mercenary companies bet on young fighters, there is evidence of operators up to 40 and 50 years old. “It’s not the same with the rest, who use veterans of the Navy Seal, the Delta Force or the SAS who are barely over thirty,” he adds.
In what they do agree with their colleagues is in the international controversies they have caused. In a 2021 resolution ‘on human rights violations by military companies’, the European Parliament charged the Wagner Group for perpetrating “war crimes” and “destabilizing actions” in third countries. The report was clarifying, since it confirmed that the organization has “10,000 employees” and that it had a direct relationship with Putin and the GRU. The same president referred to them in a veiled way during the Ukraine crisis in 2014 with the following words: “A group of private military companies would be an efficient instrument to achieve national objectives without directly involving the Russian state.” At the operational level, however, the Wagner Group has suffered major defeats.
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