Wagner Group
The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner, is a Russian state-funded private military company that was controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and since then by Pavel Prigozhin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.
The group emerged during the war in Donbas, where it helped Russian separatist forces in Ukraine from 2014 to 2015. Wagner played a significant role in the later full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which it recruited Russian prison inmates for frontline combat. By the end of 2022, its strength in Ukraine had grown from 1,000 to between 20,000 and 50,000. It was reportedly Russia's main assault force in the Battle of Bakhmut. Wagner has also supported regimes friendly with Russia, including in the civil wars in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali. In Africa, it has offered regimes security in exchange for the transfer of diamond- and gold-mining contracts to Russian companies. Some Wagner members, including its alleged co-founder Dmitry Utkin, have been linked to the far-right, and the unit has been accused of war crimes including murder, torture, rape and robbery of civilians, as well as torturing and killing accused deserters.
Prigozhin admitted that he was the leader of Wagner in September 2022. He began openly criticizing the Russian Defense Ministry for mishandling the war against Ukraine, eventually saying that the Russian government's stated reasons for the invasion were lies. On 23 June 2023, he led the Wagner Group in an armed rebellion against Russia after accusing the Defense Ministry of shelling Wagner soldiers. Wagner units seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, while a Wagner convoy headed towards Moscow. The mutiny was halted the next day when an agreement was reached: Wagner mutineers would not be prosecuted if they chose to either sign contracts with the Defense Ministry or withdraw to Belarus.
Prigozhin, along with Wagner commanders Dmitry Utkin and Valery Chekalov, died on 23 August 2023 in a plane crash in Russia, leaving Wagner's leadership structure unclear. Western intelligence reported that it was likely caused by an explosion on board, and it is widely suspected that the Russian state was involved. In October 2023, pro-Wagner groups reported that Pavel Prigozhin, son of former leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, had taken over command of the Wagner Group.
Origins and leadership
The Wagner Group first appeared in 2014, during the Russian annexation of Crimea. Until 2022 it was unclear who founded and led the group. Both Dmitry Utkin and Yevgeny Prigozhin have been named as its founders and leaders. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin claimed to have founded Wagner and he was referred to as the group's head. Some sources say Prigozhin was its owner and financier while Utkin was its military commander.Yevgeny Prigozhin
It was long reported that Prigozhin had links with Wagner and Utkin personally. He was sometimes called "Putin's chef", because of his catering businesses that hosted dinners for Vladimir Putin. The businessman was said to be the main funder and actual owner of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin denied any link with Wagner and had sued Bellingcat, Meduza, and Echo of Moscow for reporting his links to the mercenary group. In September 2022, he claimed to have founded the group, saying "I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this. From that moment, on May 1, 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion". Prigozhin became Wagner's public face and was referred to as its chief, but as he had no military background, he reportedly relied on Utkin to command Wagner's military operations.Dmitry Utkin
Utkin was a Russian military veteran. Before his involvement with the Wagner Group, he was a lieutenant colonel and brigade commander of a Spetsnaz GRU unit, and fought in the First and Second Chechen wars. Many sources name Utkin as a founder and the first commander of Wagner. Reportedly, Utkin was an admirer of Nazi Germany and the group was named from his alias "Wagner". The European Union sanctions against the Wagner Group name Utkin as its founder and leader. It is reported that Utkin was Wagner's military commander, responsible for overseeing its military operations, while Prigozhin was its owner, financier and public face. According to Bellingcat, evidence suggests Utkin "was more of a field commander" and "was not in the driver's seat of setting up this private army, but was employed as a convenient and deniable decoy to disguise its state provenance".In December 2016, Utkin was photographed with Russian president Putin at a Kremlin reception in honour of those who had been awarded the Order of Courage and the title Hero of the Russian Federation, along with Alexander Kuznetsov, Andrey Bogatov and Andrei Troshev. Kuznetsov was said to be the commander of Wagner's first reconnaissance and assault company, Bogatov was the commander of the fourth reconnaissance and assault company, and Troshev served as the company's "executive director". A few days after, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the presence of Utkin at the reception.
Konstantin Pikalov
Colonel Konstantin Aleksandrovich Pikalov was said to have been put in charge of Wagner's African operations in 2019. Pikalov served as an officer in Russia's experimental military unit numbered 99795, based in the village of Storozhevo, near Saint Petersburg. The unit was tasked, in part, with "determining the effects of radioactive rays on living organisms". Following his retirement, he continued to live on the military base until at least 2012 and ran a private detective agency. In 2014 he allegedly took part in suppressing opponents of the Russian-backed president of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, during the Republika Srpska general election. Between 2014 and 2017, Pikalov traveled several times to destinations near the Ukrainian border, sometimes on joint bookings with known Wagner officers. Former employees of Prigozhin said Pikalov took part in military operations in Ukraine and Syria.Organization
In early 2016, Wagner had 1,000 employees, which later rose to 5,000 by August 2017, and 6,000 by December 2017. The organization was said to be registered in Argentina and has offices in Saint Petersburg and Hong Kong. In November 2022, Wagner opened a new headquarters and technology center at the PMC Wagner Center building in the east of Saint Petersburg.In early October 2017, the SBU said that Wagner's funding in 2017 had been increased by 185 million rubles and that around forty Ukrainian nationals were working for Wagner, with the remaining 95 percent of the personnel being Russian citizens. One Ukrainian was killed in Syria while fighting in the ranks of Wagner in March 2016, and three were reported overall to have died that spring. Armenians, Kazakhs and Moldovans have also worked for Wagner.
Following the deployment of its contractors between 2017 and 2019, to Sudan, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Libya and Mozambique, the Wagner Group had offices in 20 African countries, including Eswatini, Lesotho and Botswana, by the end of 2019. Early in 2020, Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater private military company, sought to provide military services to the Wagner Group in its operations in Libya and Mozambique, according to The Intercept. By March 2021, Wagner PMCs were reportedly also deployed in Zimbabwe, Angola, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and possibly the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the Financial Times, the Wagner Group does not exist as a single incorporated entity, but instead as a "sprawling network of interacting companies with varying degrees of proximity to Concord group" – such as Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering. This abstruse structure has allegedly complicated efforts by Western governments to restrict Wagner's activities.
Wagner's network of shell companies, reported to be primarily trading in illegally mined and extracted natural resources, has also been shown to have used Western banking systems to process funds without their knowledge. The Washington-based think-tank the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, uncovered leaked documents showing how in 2017 the Sudanese Mining company, Meroe Gold, acting as a shell company for the Wagner Group, was able to use financial services provided by JP Morgan Chase to process a payment to a seller in China. C4ADS's report on the leaked documents showed that without the use of legitimate financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase and HSBC as intermediaries to facilitate the movement of funds, the Wagner Group would not have been able to establish a foothold in Africa.
Based partly on leaked documents provided by the Dossier Center, investigative journalist David Patrikarakos has stated that Wagner has never been under the control of either the GRU or the Ministry of Defense, as has often been claimed, but is instead exclusively run by Prigozhin.
Recruitment, training, techniques
The company trains its personnel at a Russian MoD facility, Molkino, near the remote village of Molkin, Krasnodar Krai. The barracks at the base are officially not linked to the Russian MoD, with court documents describing them as a children's vacation camp. According to a report published by Russian monthly , the organisation that hired personnel for Wagner did not have a permanent name and had a legal address near the military settlement Pavshino in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow. In December 2021, New Lines magazine analyzed data about 4,184 Wagner members who had been identified by researchers at the Ukrainian Center of Analytics and Security, finding that the average age of a Wagner private military contractor is forty years old and that the PMCs came from as many as fifteen different countries, though the majority were from Russia.When new PMC recruits arrive at the training camp, they are no longer allowed to use social network services and other Internet resources. Company employees are not allowed to post photos, texts, audio and video recordings or any other information on the Internet that was obtained during their training. They are not allowed to tell anyone their location, whether they are in Russia or another country. Mobile phones, tablets and other means of communication are left with the company and issued at a certain time with the permission of their commander.
Passports and other documents are surrendered and in return company employees receive a nameless dog tag with a personal number. The company only accepts new recruits if a 10-year confidentiality agreement is established and in case of a breach of the confidentiality the company reserves the right to terminate the employee's contract without paying a fee. According to the Security Service of Ukraine, Russian military officers are assigned the role of drill instructors for the recruits. During their training, the PMCs receive $1,100 per month.
The pay of Wagner PMCs, who are usually retired regular Russian servicemen aged between 35 and 55, is estimated to be between 80,000 and 250,000 Russian rubles a month. One source stated the pay was as high as 300,000.
In late 2019, a so-called Wagner code of honor was revealed that lists ten commandments for Wagner's PMCs to follow. These include, among others, to protect the interests of Russia always and everywhere, to value the honor of a Russian soldier, to fight not for money, but from the principle of winning always and everywhere.
With increasing casualties on both sides in the war in Ukraine, the Russian government used the Wagner Group for recruitment. The NGO Meduza reported that the Russian Defense Ministry had taken control of Wagner's networks and was using its reputation for recruitment, but that the requirements had been reduced, with drug tests also reportedly not being done before duty. According to British intelligence, since July 2022 at the latest, the Wagner Group has been trying to recruit inmates from Russian prisons in order to alleviate the lack of cadets. In return for agreeing to fight in Ukraine, the criminals are promised a shortening of the sentence and monetary remuneration. BBC Russian Service reported that according to jurists, it is not legal to send inmates to war. Captured and retired members report that the Wagner policy of "zeroing out" of fighters who retreat or desert means that in situations where regular Army units would retreat, Wagner continues its assault. "If they move forward, they at least have the chance to live another day. If they go back, they're dead for sure." A Ukrainian battalion commander reported that in intercepted radio traffic on the battlefield, Ukrainians hear "over and over" Wagner commanders giving the order: "Anyone who takes a step back, zero them out."
The Wagner Group reportedly recruited imprisoned UPC rebels in the Central African Republic to fight in Mali and Ukraine. They are reportedly nicknamed the "Black Russians".
In April 2023, The New York Times reported that it had interviewed several HIV-positive former Wagner fighters who said that they had been deprived of effective treatment as convicts unless they agreed to fight in the group.