Search Results for: mercenaries

“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the horrible news.”          Berthold Brecht An Existential Task Until the end of his presidency –  and even after his open complicity in subverting the United States Constitution on January 6, 2021 – Donald J. Trump held effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Now, after multiple criminal [...]

Ernesa Shala is a JURIST staff correspondent in Kosovo and a recent graduate of the University of Pristina Faculty of Law. She files this dispatch from Pristina.   In the early morning of September 24, 2023, the peaceful village of Banjska near Kosovo’s Serbian border was a target of terrorist attacks which left one Kosovo [...]

Norwegian police arrested former commander of the Wagner Group, Andrey Medvedev, on Friday under suspicion of attempting to illegally cross the border into Russia, according to local Norwegian news site the Barents Observer. Earlier this year, Medvedev sought asylum in Norway. Norwegian police in Finnmark confirmed they had arrested a man attempting to cross the [...]

The UK government announced Wednesday that they would designate the Wagner Group, a mercenary group known for their involvement in the war in Ukraine, as a terrorist organization. As a result of the designation, it will be illegal for anyone within the UK for anyone to be a member of or support the Wagner Group. [...]

“The conflict is long. The conflict is brutal. The conflict is intense,” said David M. Crane, formerly a chief war crimes prosecutor with the UN. Global Accountability Network , an organization Crane founded to monitor atrocities around the globe, has been following the war since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. GAN has meticulously documented [...]

UN experts condemned Monday the Russian Constitutional Court’s decision to dismiss challenges to the constitutionality of recently enacted laws that criminalize any public act seeking to discredit the use of Russian Armed Forces. In the wake of the Russia-Ukraine War, these new laws have been used by Russian authorities to arrest over 20,000 people for [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an executive order on Friday ordering military units to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian state. The oath, contained within the order, requires individuals to “strictly follow the orders of commanders and superiors.” Under Article 87 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the President is the “supreme [...]

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of powerful Russian mercenary group Wagner, died in a plane crash on Wednesday, alongside the group’s alleged founder Dmitry Utkin. “The Wagner leadership has confirmed the deaths of Prigozhin and Utkin,” according to the Wagner Group Telegram channel, which for several hours prior had urged the public to “not panic” as rumors [...]

Niger’s national broadcaster identified Army General Abdourahamane Tiani as President of Niger’s new military government on Friday following a coup that deposed former President Mohamed Bazoum. The country’s ruling council, called the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland, was formed out of Niger’s presidential guard, which carried out the coup. In a televised [...]

Belarusian law students enrolled at European Humanities University are filing reports with JURIST on current circumstances in Belarus under the constitutionally-disputed presidency of Alexander Lukashenka. Katsiaryna Vasilionak files this dispatch from Vilnius, Lithuania.  During the period of June 23-24, the private military company Wagner, headed by Prigozhin, attempted an armed rebellion in Russia. Alexander Lukashenka [...]