Russian mercenaries fought against Azerbaijan and may stay in Karabakh

Baku/23.01.21/Turan: On January 22 (2020), the Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan announced the arrest of two Libyan mercenaries who fought in Karabakh on the side of Armenia. There are now more than 100 prisoners of the enemy army in Azerbaijan, the investigation may reveal other foreign mercenaries who, according to the Geneva Convention, do not fall under the law on protection of the prisoners of war. The country's Foreign Ministry may express an official protest to the governments of Lebanon and other countries, whose citizens illegally arrived in our country in order to kill Azerbaijanis.

The government of Russia, a country that supplied Armenia with lethal weapons directly during the war of its army on the territory of Azerbaijan, and whose state citizens fought in Karabakh, should not stay aside.

In addition to the undoubted participation of Armenians from Russia in the war against Azerbaijan, professional mercenaries from Wagner PMCs acted against our country, the name of a private military campaign, whose owner Sergei Prigozhin, received a nickname after the famous composer whose works he loves.

On November 4, the Turan agency, citing Radio Liberty, reported that the first fighters of PMC Wagner arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh in late August and early September.

Some Russian publications wrote that 500 Wagner fighters arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh in early November. Shusha was defended by 300 people.

Retired Russian army captain Viktor Zlobov said that Wagner PMC played a significant role in preserving the little that it managed to keep. Apparently, Shusha was kept mainly thanks to the Russian volunteers,” he said.

Veteran of the Russian secret services Viktor Ognev in an interview with the correspondent of “Novyi Izvestia” discusses the number of Wagnerites in Karabakh: “Media reported about several hundred. A certain defense sector can be blocked. Air defense can be organized. Something similar, apparently, was done. It is not for nothing that Azerbaijan has sharply reduced the number of videos with the successful use of various UAVs,” Ognev sums up.

On December 2, the Russian Planet website reported that a message appeared in one of the Telegram channels about Armenia's refusal to pay employees of a Russian private military company for their work.

The Armenian website Arminfo reported on a Telegram channel linked to Wagner. This resource has hinted that his mercenaries are now in Nagorno-Karabakh. Next, the Yerevan resource published a report on the investigation of the Bellicgcat website: "The geolocation of some of the photos published by the channel indicates that they were actually taken not in the South Caucasus, but in Syria. These hints seem to have been a hoax; there is no evidence that Wagner is in Nagorno-Karabakh," Arminfo noted.

However, the "Russian Planet" and other resources posted a photo of a fighter from the PMC "Wagner", who was shot against the background of the Armenian Church in Shusha.

The Georgian expert on national security Gocha Gvaramia believes that the mercenaries from the Wagner group remained in Karabakh.

“The Russian side disseminated information that all servicemen, that is, 1960 people who will be deployed in the Karabakh conflict zone, have Syrian experience. It turns out that they served in Syria. It is easy to find out what the Russian troops were doing in Syria, you just need to use the services of Google. The troops that bombed hospitals and schools. It is also no secret that mainly contract soldiers from the Wagner group fought there, the combat strength of which is from the GRU of the Russian Ministry of Defense, or trained by them. Taking into account the fact that it is not difficult for the GRU to forge documents, to reorganize any military unit to suit its own needs and the Kremlin's policies, it is more likely that representatives of Wagner PMCs will be actually deployed in the Karabakh conflict zone under the cover of peacekeepers,” Gvaramia is sure.

There is a lot of information in the open press about the war of Russian mercenaries against Azerbaijan. The cruelty of the "Wagnerites" is well known in the world; they do not adhere to the international rules of humanity in war. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry should not keep silent about the war of a military campaign close to Putin against our country, "so as not to cast a shadow over the strategic relations between the two countries."-0-