Wagner-linked group buys helmets from China despite sanctions

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A front company for the Russian mercenary group Wagner acquired tens of thousands of hard hats from China late last year as the group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised a vast army of prisoners to attack the Ukraine.

The Financial Times found that entities used by the warlord to equip his operations in Africa have continued to freely export and import items in international markets despite a barrage of Western sanctions designed to stop a private army designated as a “transnational criminal organization” by the US.

A Russian-based company linked to Wagner, Broker Expert, bought 20,000 polymer-based helmets from a small Chinese company called Hangzhou Shinerain Import And Export Co in November and December last year, according to customs declarations analyzed. by the FT and interviews. The Chinese group claimed they were intended for “gaming use”.

Prigozhin, in a voicemail via his catering group, told the FT he had “never heard of the name of the company” involved in purchasing the helmet. He then offered to send the FT “a big bag with my dirty laundry that I’ll be collecting for a week or two so you can do a survey of my underpants, socks, used toilet paper, and whatever else you like.”

The purchase of the helmets, split into four shipments with a reported value of just over $2 million, came as Prigozhin recruited tens of thousands of Russian convicts to be sent to the frontline in Ukraine.

Since then, many of these Wagnerian forces have died in a brutal attrition war to gain control of the city of Bakhmut, with the United States recently estimating that more than 20,000 Russian fighters had been killed in Ukraine since December.

The FT also found that Broker Expert continued to ship items to Wagner’s operations in Africa through the port of Douala in Cameroon during the invasion. This underscores the apparent inability of Western sanctions – which include measures such as asset freezes and denials of access to funds – to stifle the mercenary group’s ability to finance itself from natural resource operations abroad. stranger from Prigozhin.

According to Russian customs declarations, Broker Expert last August shipped generators, welding electrodes and fire-retardant insulation materials to a Prigozhin-controlled logging company in the Central African Republic. The United States said in January that Wagner fighters in the CAR had engaged in crimes including “mass summary executions, rape, arbitrary detention, torture, and displacement of civilians.”

“The fact that Prigozhin is still able to deploy armed contractors to Ukraine and at least three African countries, to buy equipment from China and to smuggle resources shows how much the network he has built is resilient,” said Marcel Plichta, a researcher at the Center for Global Law. and governance at the University of St Andrews.

The United States estimated in December that Wagner recruited 40,000 convicts to fight in Ukraine. Wagner unsuccessfully appealed to China for arms supplies earlier this year, according to a leaked US intelligence report. Prigozhin said in February that Wagner had stopped recruiting prisoners.

Broker Expert’s Chinese supplier, Hangzhou Shinerain, is based in the eastern province of Zhejiang and has between five and 15 employees, according to its Alibaba page. It normally sells women’s clothing, which means shipping protective headgear to Russia does not appear to be part of its usual business model.

“We are a private company and we do not get involved in national affairs or military matters, and abide by the law. We produced headsets for gaming,” the company said, adding that the headsets would have little protective use on the battlefield. The Russian import declaration for the helmets states that they are “not for military use”.

The Chinese group said it had no knowledge of Prigozhin or the Wagner Group, or anything of Broker Expert’s dealings with Wagner. “We just respect the orders we receive, and we obey the law, we won’t ship anything illegal.” He declined to explain what was meant by “gaming use” or to send pictures of the headsets to the FT.

CNN reported in January that Western intelligence officials were concerned about Chinese companies provide non-lethal material such as bulletproof vests and helmets to Russia, but it was unclear whether the Chinese central government was aware of these sales. Private Chinese companies are not required to follow Western sanctions, and imports from China have increased over the past year as Russian companies seek alternatives to Western suppliers.

Broker Expert’s large purchase from China during Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine was its first reported import into the country since 2017, according to commercially available customs data.

The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, says on its website that it supplies equipment for geological surveys, industrial mining and construction. It is not directly controlled by Prigozhin but shares an obscure listener with Wagner’s US-sanctioned front companies in Syria, Sudan and the Central African Republic, as well as his mother’s art gallery in St. Petersburg.

Over the past four years, Broker Expert, which has not been sanctioned by any Western government, has regularly shipped equipment from Russia to companies in Sudan and CAR that have been sanctioned by the United States. for serving as a front for Wagner’s mercenary activities.

The FT reported earlier this year that Prigozhin had generated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue from his overseas natural resource empire in the four years leading up to Ukraine’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow, despite Western sanctions.

“For the UK, the US, France and others, the news that Prigozhin’s businesses are still strong after all these measures underscores the need to cooperate with as many countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia as possible to restrict its access to global markets,” said Plichta.