Wagner Group opens recruitment center in Murmansk

The Russian paramilitary company is opening offices across Russia to recruit more warriors for its bloody operations in Ukraine. According to Tsargrad, a conservative media resource associated with the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, Murmansk is one of 42 Russian cities that is getting a Wagner recruitment center.

It will reportedly be opened as part of the sport club “Viking” in Murmansk City.

“These are the places to contact for new fighters that want to fight with us side-by-side for the protection of our country and our land, create a common future and preserve memories of the past,” head of the private army Yevgeny Prigozhin underlines.

In Murmansk, information about for the new center was posted on social media of local sport and fighting clubs like the Golovchenko martial arts school.

According to the advertisements, volunteers aged 22-50 that pass a preliminary test will be sent to the south Russian region of Krasnodar for preparations and training.

They will subsequently be sent to the battlefields in Ukraine.

A central person behind the local recruitment office in Murmansk is Yegor Golovchenko, presumably the son of Vyacheslav Golovhenko, the man who previously headed the Russian Savate (French boxing) Federation

Vyacheslav Golovhenko was director of a youth sport school in Polyarny, Murmansk region, but was dismissed after he was caught in a major fraud case, the Russian version of the Barents Observer reports.

A similar Wagner recruitment office might soon open also in the neighbouring region of Karelia. Reportedly, representatives of the mercenaries have been in Petrozavodsk to meet with local authorities.

“An envoy of Prigozhin appeared in Petrozavodsk to start informal consultations with representatives of city authorities on issues of interaction,” local journalist Anatoly Tsygankov told the Barents Observer.

The Wagner Group is initiating efforts also in the field of children and youth. Within the frames of its grand Wagner Center in downtown St.Petersburg a “Wagner Kids Club” has opened.

Its mission is to “vaccinate the young generation with love for the fatherland,” the VK page of the club reads.

The club organises political debates and events, as well as military-patriotic training and volunteering. Its official name is “Lider”, but it is also called “Wagner Kids Club” (Wagnerenok).

Regional units of the club appear to be opening across Russia. In the town of Apatity, Kola Peninsula, a recent advertisement in social media invited local children and youth to take part in a class of so-called “profession orientation” with representatives of the Wagner company. The initiative was aimed at school kids and was to include representatives of Wagner’s recruitment unit, as well as fighters with experience from the war against Ukraine.

The warriors were to tell the kids about “heroic histories” from the war, and also introduce them to the new “Wagner Kids Club.”

The Wagner Group is a private mercenary armed formation that since its establishment in 2014 has been closely connected with the Kremlin and the Russian Armed Forces. It is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man also known for his engagement in Russia’s so-called troll factories and ownership of a big number of online media initiatives that push fake news and perverted pro-Kremlin narratives. Wagner mercenaries have been active in Ukraine since 2014. They are known for their extreme brutality and are believed to have lost thousands of men in operations around Bakhmut and other Ukrainian areas.