Kadyrov wants to form a group similar to Wagner to compete with Prigozhin
The president of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov announced that he wants one day to have his own paramilitary group, modeled on the Wagner group.
“When I finish serving the state, I plan to compete with Yevgeny Prigozhin… I think that can work,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.
Yevgeny Prigozhin is the head of Wagner’s paramilitary group, which he made a fighting force in Ukraine alongside the Russian forces, which allowed him to present himself as a war leader.
Kadyrov, who has headed the Chechen Republic since 2007, declared that Wagner, which is fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, had achieved amazing results, and that private military companies were necessary.
Western diplomats fear that the rise of Wagner and other mercenary forces outside of traditional Russian military command structures could lead to the emergence of new paramilitary groups that could pose a threat.
The Wagner Group played an increasingly important role during the Russian war on Ukraine, carrying out several attacks within months on the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.
