Instructors who fought for Wagner in Africa trained agents in camps in the Balkan forests. These agents were sent to sabotage the elections in Moldova, to storm the capital of Romania, and to fight in Ukraine – the same personnel, modular missions.
In January 2025, about 300 mercenaries under the command of the Romanian-French fighter Horațiu Potra were captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Subsequently, they were taken over by the UN and “repatriated”.
Nine months later, European police carried out searches in 70 locations in the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, targeting 654 suspects affiliated with the Wagner group. Among the evidence found were documents attesting that the same fighters were involved in both the war in Ukraine and the conflicts in Congo.
Investigations revealed a transcontinental network: a system by which fighters were rotated between African battlefields, training camps in the Balkans, and electoral operations in Europe. Some names reappeared in Romania, at a horse farm near Bucharest, where a presidential candidate allegedly prepared a violent action to take power, writes euromaidanpress.com
The modular network of mercenaries
The searches in October 2025 revealed a complex infrastructure: Wagner instructors training operatives in Bosnia, the same people later involved in sabotaging the elections in Moldova and then in the fights in Congo and Ukraine. The goal – for Moscow to be able to deny that it uses foreign citizens in missions to destabilize European democracies.
The evolution of a recruiter
Anatolii Prizenko, a Ukrainian recruiter, was one of the architects of the method. In the summer of 2024, he observed young Moldovans at paintball competitions, analyzing their reactions and decision-making ability. Those selected were offered $300-500 for ten days of “work”, without details.
A year earlier, in 2023, Prizenko had recruited people for an operation in Paris – drawing Stars of David on buildings during the Israel-Hamas conflict. The European Union classified the action as a GRU operation, intended to provoke social tensions. Prizenko was subsequently sanctioned and arrested in February 2025 for recruiting participants to paramilitary camps.
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