Officially, Wagner doesn’t exist. Mercenaries – contractors who fight wars for money rather than as part of an army – aren’t legal in Russia (nor in most countries, including the US and Australia, in light of international bans). But private groups of this kind still operate all around the world, including America’s Blackwater (now known as Academi), whose staff were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in 2007. Wagner has left its own (much larger) trail of war crimes across the globe, says the chair of the UN working group on mercenaries, Dr Sorcha MacLeod. “Russia is not the only country with a mercenary group,” she says. “We know Turkey has one too, but Wagner, based on what we know about where it’s been and where it operates, seems to be the biggest. It’s really a proxy force of the Russian state.” Wagner is pronounced “Vagner” for Hitler’s favourite composer. It’s also the call sign of the group’s unconfirmed leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence lieutenant, Wagner fan and suspected neo-Nazi. Wagner emerged in 2014 as Russia seized Crimea, part of the “little green men” (soldiers in unmarked green uniforms) sent in to take Ukrainian territory. Utkin himself was wounded in the fighting that became the long-running war of the Donbas. Unofficially, Wagner mercenaries are sometimes called “the cleaners” or “the orchestra”, known for “making noise” with brutal onslaughts. In Syria, they’ve backed Bashar al-Assad’s regime and guarded lucrative oil fields; in Libya, they joined the forces of rebel general Khalifa Haftar in 2019 after he attacked the UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli. And across Africa, they’ve been brought in to help military governments crack down on rebellion and terrorist cells (and seize diamond mines). Now in Ukraine, they’re back fighting in large numbers, reportedly “rented out” as a strike team by Russian army units and increasingly acting as a regular part of the military. Using mercenaries means Russia can distance itself from Wagner atrocities – the group often do the Kremlin’s dirty work, experts say – and it helps quell fears at home of Russian soldiers returning in body bags. “It’s about plausible deniability,” says MacLeod. “Russia says – and has said when we’ve sent them allegation letters [over Wagner] human rights violations – that mercenaries aren’t permitted under Russian law, so they can’t be doing that.” Hired guns are not new – popes and kings have used them – and, historically, they’ve been known for brutality. They do not have the same chain of command and oversight that regular armies do. But, in modern times, Wagner has taken that to a new level, says MacLeod. “There are no ID numbers, or uniforms, no accountability. Locals might recognise them as the white guys, or the Russians, even as Wagner, but usually that’s as far as it goes.” Fighters are made to sign non-disclosure agreements and are hired through a complex web of shell companies. In fact, many experts now understand the group as more of a network of Russian military contractors – code for the Kremlin outsourcing – rather than one single business entity. “Of course, for an organisation like this that operates in the shadows, it suits them for there to be speculation about who they are, their size, where they are,” MacLeod says. “That adds to the mystique.” Still, journalists and international investigators such as MacLeod have pieced together a picture of how Wagner operates.
Who (and how) does Wagner recruit? The group typically recruits in code, says researcher Isabella Currie at La Trobe University, offering spots to “musicians on tour for the Wagner Conservatory” or, more recently, for “a picnic in Ukraine”. Sometimes they will pose with violins or other musical instruments in photos from the battlefield. “It’s a joke and everyone’s in on it,” Currie says. “It’s just that the joke is terrifying.” Recruits tend to be ex-military personnel, in their 30s and 40s, often with criminal histories or hailing from small Russian towns without much work. They have a reputation as elite fighters, more seasoned than the typical Russian soldier. The bar for selection and training, though, has been lowered more and more as they take big losses in Ukraine. All up, Wagner is thought to be about 10,000 fighters strong. Its casualties in combat are not recorded publicly and so, as researcher Dr Joana de Deus Pereira writes, mercenaries can “vanish without a name”. Sometimes bodies of slain soldiers are not recovered, or their families are denied agreed compensation, told their loved one wasn’t a soldier at all but was working for a gas company or some other front. Generally, though, the pay and compensation deal is very attractive to recruits – much more than the salary on offer through the Russian army.
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