A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.
Prigozhin made front-page headlines last week when he was indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on charges of bankrolling and guiding a long-running Russian scheme to conduct “information warfare” during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Among his various enterprises, U.S. intelligence believes that Prigozhin also “almost certainly” controls Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.
ASBEST, Russia— Igor Kosoturov died as he fought: in the shadows.
Word of the 45-year-old’s death on a distant Syrian battlefield earlier this month reached his hometown here on the slopes of Russia’s Ural mountains by a circuitous—and informal—route.
There was no official notification, no thanks from a grateful nation. Instead, there was a message from a comrade-in-arms, relayed via fighters in Ukraine, that Mr. Kosoturov was killed in a U.S. airstrike.
A former special-forces soldier in the Russian military who later fought in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Kosoturov was in Syria as a member of a private military company known as the Wagner group, his friends say. According to two Russian officials and a former member, the Wagner group was sent there by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and the most prominent of the 13 Russians indicted this month for interfering in the U.S. presidential election.
Russian law bars private fighters and the funding of their activities. A spokesman for Mr. Prigozhin has previously said Mr. Prigozhin has no relationship to the Wagner group.
Russians former fighters active in both Ukraine and Syria say they fought with such units, which further the Kremlin’s interests but don’t wear Russian uniforms. Their murky status gives the Russian government a measure of deniability over foreign interventions. Critics of the Kremlin say the use of such groups also aims to head off public discontent over dead soldiers of the sort that sapped national morale during wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
“The government has washed its hands of them,” said a friend of Mr. Kosoturov who is seeking his remains and those of the other dead in his unit.
The arc of Mr. Kosoturov’s life, reconstructed from interviews with four people who knew him, shows how such fighters take up causes the Kremlin supports. The aftermath of his death illustrates how Moscow keeps its distance from the results.
Mr. Kosoturov was an army special-forces soldier in Chechnya in the late 1990s and early 2000s before moving out of his last base to nearby Asbest, about 900 miles east of Moscow. The dreary town of around 60,000 residents sits on the edge of a 10-square-mile open-pit mine for asbestos, the hazardous mineral that remains the economic lifeblood here.
Like many other hard-scrabble Russian towns, Asbest has had another export in recent years: men like Mr. Kosoturov who set off for conflict zones, fueled by a mix of patriotism, camaraderie and a search for financial rewards. Natalya Krylova, a friend of Mr. Kosoturov and a municipal lawmaker who opposes Mr. Putin, says a second man from Asbest was also killed in the Feb. 7 U.S. airstrike, and at least two were killed fighting in eastern Ukraine.
“Our Asbest guys are bargaining chips for Putin’s ambitions,” she said.
After settling in Asbest, Mr. Kosoturov made money as best he could. He sold used cars that he had driven here from the Pacific coast, ran a firm that renovated apartments, and opened a cafe and small food store.
His businesses brought him a measure of prosperity at first. Residents say he was long the first to chip in for food at school celebrations and picnics with friends. But more recently his companies began to struggle.
In 2015 Mr. Kosoturov headed to eastern Ukraine to deliver food and medicines, and stayed to fight on the side of antigovernment insurgents backed by the Kremlin. Some friends say he wanted to earn money, in part to put his daughter through college; others stress his sense of duty and the fellowship he felt from army service, citing the many stories he liked to tell stressing the solidarity among fellow fighters.
Shrapnel from an explosion tore off part of Mr. Kosoturov’s thigh during a reconnaissance mission in Ukraine. But he recovered enough to be with his unit last year when it headed to Syria, where military contractors can earn in a month what many in Asbest do in eight months.
“He always said, ‘My family shouldn’t want for anything,’” recalled Nadezhda Ostapchuk, a friend.
Before he went, another friend pointed out rumors of large casualties there. “What makes you think I’ll be one of them?” Mr. Kosoturov replied.
Mr. Kosoturov’s unit was assigned to guard an oil refinery in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour. Then on Feb. 7 it set out as part of a column aiming to seize control of another refinery, according to a person familiar with the operation, and was decimated by a U.S. airstrike.
As news of several deaths trickled out in the following days via social media, the Kremlin said it knew nothing about them. The Foreign Ministry later suggested five Russians had been killed and others wounded, without giving any details of the circumstances.
The news that reached Asbest via fighters in eastern Ukraine was that about 30 men had been killed in the Syrian airstrike. Later a person who had helped collect the remains described the scene to one of Mr. Kosoturov’s former comrades with an expletive and the words “lumps of flesh,” according to a person familiar with the conversation. The dead could have numbered many more, according to the contractor’s account to Mr. Kosoturov’s former comrade.
The Russian Foreign Ministry last week again said the clash didn’t involve the Russian military. “There are Russian citizens in Syria who went there of their own will and with various goals,” it said in a statement, adding dozens of injured had been brought to Russia for treatment. It made no mention of the dead.
Mr. Kosoturov’s friends and family have had no luck tracking down his body through contacts in Syria, eastern Ukraine and St. Petersburg.
“If they want to completely hush everything up, maybe they won’t bring the body,” one friend said.
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