A patriotic youth club was opened in Saint Petersburg with the support of the PMC Wagner Center. How complaints publication “Paper”, whose correspondent visited one of the events of the organization, his name is “Vagnerenok”.
The club’s curator was former St. Petersburg youth parliament member Alexander Tronin, 18, writes ‘Paper’. In January he was expelled from the Liberal Democratic Party, after which he was “contacted by representatives of Prigozhin and offered to lead Vagnerenko”.
“It so happened that together with Deputy Vasily Vlasov we came to Yevgeny Prigozhin. We were told: there is a center, take care of the youth, what you have done, do it, but from scratch. And we literally kicked off this project in early February,” Tronin told the publication.
Press service of the PMC Wagner Center Remarks that in February Tronin became his resident, and even earlier he created the youth club “Leader”. “The youth club is a supporter of PMC Wagner and Alexander is a resident of the PMC Wagner Center. From there, information appeared in the media about Wagnerenok, but this is not reliable information, the club is called Leader,” the center said in a statement.
At the same time, the organization’s community on VKontakte is simply called the Youth Club.
How said RIA Novosti deputy curator of the organization Kirill Ovchinnikov, club members are about 60 people, the average age of participants is about 18 years old. In the description of the club community in VKontakte said that his task is “to inculcate in the younger generations the love of their country”.
Within the framework of the club, the organizers organize meetings for schoolchildren and students with government officials, military personnel, bloggers and “other personalities who promote the true values of Russia”.
According to Kirill Ovchinnikov, in addition to patriotic events, members of the club, as volunteers, help the families of participants in the military operation in Ukraine. In their free time, members of the organization are offered to play a military drone simulator.
To join the youth club, the organizers ask them to write to them on social networks, bring a passport, two photographs and an autobiography, and then wait for an admission decision. According to Papers, applicants for club membership are vetted by the Wagner Center PMC security department.
According to one of the community posts, the first meeting within the club took place on January 29. He was followed by the leader of “A Just Russia – For the Truth” Sergei Mironov. The organization was also visited by deputies of the State Duma Vasily Vlasov , Mary Butina bloggers Vitaly Veresk And Yuri Podoliaka . As Paper noted, their lectures have not been publicly announced.
The “Paper” correspondent visited the club meeting on February 22. That day, Special Forces officer Viktor Shmarkovsky served as the speaker. Listeners asked him what he thought of “mediums in the special forces”. Shmarkovsky replied that he “radiates delta waves himself” and that his brain “is able to withstand any blow due to the accumulation of fluid in certain areas”. The commando was called “the child of the first atomic bomb”. According to the journalist of “Bumaga”, schoolchildren and students who came to the event were offered an exemption from lessons in exchange.
Meanwhile, authorities in St. Petersburg are denying the release of schoolchildren from classes for the sake of a youth club at the PMC Wagner Center. In the municipal education committee, the publication “Rise” explain that children can only be released from classes in two cases: either on the basis of a request from the legal representatives, or on the basis of an order from the school director.
Evgeny Prigozhin announced the opening of the PMC Wagner Center in October 2022. Aleksey Tensin, the former quality director of Kalashnikov Concern, which managed its main production site, became its CEO.
The PMC Wagner Center’s press service said it rented “most of the space” in the business center. The company rents some of them free of charge to “inventors, computer scientists, experimental production spaces and start-ups”.
The mission of the center is representatives of Prigozhin called “to provide a comfortable environment for the generation of new ideas to increase Russia’s defense capability, including information.”
