Reports ftom Central Africa indicated that RUSSIAN MERCENARIES ARE chasing one of the world’s most notorious fugitives: the warlord Joseph Kony, who abducted tens of thousands of children from across central Africa, brutalizing and brainwashing them as child soldiers and sex slaves in a decades-long maelstrom of terror.
American magazine, Rolling Stone, reported on Sunday about a bloody near-capture of Kony by Russian mercenaries working for the Wagner Group, in a remote corner of the Central African Republic in early April. A social media post affiliated with Wagner also confirms some aspects of the group’s interest in the warlord.
“This amounts to hot pursuit [in] the African bush,” says a U.S. source familiar with efforts to capture the warlord. “The U.S. military got within 72 hours of Kony. Wagner may be even closer.”
The development comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) closed its investigation into alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda.
He is suspected of 12 counts of crimes against humanity (murder, enslavement, sexual enslavement, rape, inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering) and 21 counts of war crimes (murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape, and forced enlistment of children) allegedly committed in 2003 and 2004 in northern Uganda.
To understand the Wagner operation in pursuit of Kony, Rolling Stone connected with a rebel group whose members witnessed portions of the April 7 attack and its aftermath near a village in eastern Central African Republic called Yemen (like the country).
As the rebel group — UPC, or Union for Peace in Central Africa — was on the move in the hinterlands, a rebel commander named Ousmane relayed the account from fighters on the ground in a series of voice messages.
“At least four people were killed, including two civilians and two Wagner,” Ousmane says, adding that Kony was “still in the area” as of April 8.
Wagner operation
The operation began when 14 defectors from Kony’s “Lord’s Resistance Army,” or the LRA, surrendered to a group of men posing as Central African Republic government forces at the end of March.
The men were, in fact, a Chadian armed group affiliated with Wagner, which often partners with local militias to support its operations.
The defection occurred in Central African Republic’s Haute-Kotto Prefecture, a wooded savanna of more than 33,800 square miles — larger than South Carolina — with few roads and numerous isolated villages.
Its dense shrublands and intricate network of rivers, streams, and pools are a haven for armed groups, ivory smugglers, and poachers, and it has long been key to Kony’s survival.
The Chadian group brought the 14 LRA members — a mix of combatants, civilians and two children — to a town called Sam Ouandjia, where they contacted Wagner, who soon arrived in force.
Wagner forces arrested the defectors and took them to an unknown destination, says a source with expertise in the region and the LRA, who requested anonymity given security risks to individuals in the Central African Republic.