The DirleWagner Brigade

Hardened criminals turned loose, given guns, and sent to war. This sounds familiar...

Cathy Young shines a spotlight on some of Russia’s new military heroes, fighting for [reason TBD] in Ukraine:

[The Russian Ministry of Defence] attributed the apparent success in Soledar to the cooperation of several types of troops and, in particular, praised “the courageous and selfless actions of the volunteer assault units of the Wagner private military company” in street fighting. This was the first time an official Russian source had acknowledged the Wagner PMC—which, coincidentally, was officially registered this week in Russia as the “PMC Wagner Center Joint Stock Company.” Meanwhile, Prigozhin is feeling sufficiently confident to publicly accuse unnamed government officials of being disloyal to the Russian cause and to threaten them with “the Wagner sledgehammer”—an allusion to the sledgehammer execution of Wagner defector Yevgeny Nuzhin in November.

This mainstreaming of the Wagner group in all its thuggish glory is happening even as other news reports in Russia offer a shocki…