Wagner mercenaries in Belarus led by native of Ukraine who fought in Chechnya and Syria
Journalists discovered that the mercenaries of Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), based in Belarus, are now headed by a native of Ukraine Sergey Chubko, who previously fought in Chechnya and Syria.
Source: All Eyes on Wagner monitoring project and Belarusian outlet Nasha Niva
Details: On 19 July, the Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, speaking to mercenaries in a camp near the city of Asipovichy, said that a man named Sergey, known by his alias of Pioneer, would be "chief in the Belarusian grouping."
All Eyes on Wagner claims that this person is the 46-year-old Sergey Vladimirovich Chubko. The project refers to documents obtained by an unnamed source.
Journalists of the Belarusian publication Nasha Niva found out that Chubko was born in a military family in Chernivtsi. His father fought in Afghanistan. After the collapse of the USSR, the Chubko family moved to Russia, to the city of Novorossiysk. In 1994, Sergei Chubko went to serve under a contract in the Russian army. He fought in Chechnya.
In 2002, he terminated the contract and moved to a private security company. In 2003, Sergei Chubko, who did not have a higher education, unexpectedly headed the committee of the city administration in Novorossiysk. In 2005, he moved to the post of deputy head of a rural district administration.
In 2010, Chubko worked as a security guard in several companies, and was also an employee of a private security firm. In 2011, the authorities planned to deprive him of Russian citizenship because he allegedly held his Ukrainian citizenship in secret.
It is not known whether Chubko fought in Ukraine in 2014, but in December 2014, he became one of the founders of the Cossack organisation in Novorossiysk. Russian "Cossack" volunteers massively went to fight on the side of Russia after the proclamation of the so-called independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics puppet entities in 2014.
He joined the Wagner PMC in January 2017. Then he went to Syria where he made a career, too: after a year of service, he was appointed to lead the Wagner military operation in the province of Eastern Ghouta.
Background:
- Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), supposedly spoke to the mercenaries who came to Belarus and said that they would be engaged in the training of the Belarusian army.
- On 25 July, information appeared on the 11th convoy of the Wagner PMC, which recently arrived in Belarus.
- According to the State Border Service, as of 22 July, approximately 5,000 Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group are stationed in Belarus
- On 20 July, Ukraine's Border Guards reported that the mercenaries do not currently pose a threat to Ukraine.
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