Who runs Wagner? Western intelligence agencies have long believed Wagner to be financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” for his lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin and close ties to the Russian president. Prigozhin is also wanted by the United States for funding the state-backed troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, which is accused of influencing the 2016 US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. For years, Prigozhin (who turned a hotdog stand into a food empire after serving serious prison time) vehemently denied the Wagner connection. He sued journalists who made the link, even as he raked in wealth from the group’s deployments overseas in Syria and Africa. Then, in September, Prigozhin finally admitted he owned Wagner, having been filmed touring prisons to offer convicts early release in exchange for six months fighting alongside Wagner in Ukraine. “I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this,” Prigozhin said in a statement released by his Concord catering firm. “From that moment, on May 1, 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion. I am proud that I was able to defend their right to protect the interests of their country.” Experts suspect the Russian state may directly bankroll parts of Wagner too, supplying them with weapons and aircraft and offering training. The French government has accused the Kremlin of “providing material support” to Wagner where it operates in Mali, West Africa, for example. Back home, Wagner’s training base is next door to that of the Russian army, although officially the site is listed as a children’s holiday camp. And there have been cases of Wagner troops evacuated from conflict zones to Russian military hospitals, Currie says, including after that 2018 US air strike on attacking Wagner forces in Syria. “Generally, private military companies would not receive such benefits, specialised military health care, from the state.” In 2021, Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov, along with Nader Ibrahim at the BBC, stumbled upon a discarded Wagner tablet and uncovered a “shopping list” of weapons and equipment the organisation had sent Russian authorities directly. It’s not the only time the group has been careless. In August, a pro-Kremlin war blogger inadvertently revealed the location of Wagner’s main base in eastern Luhansk, Ukraine, when he posted a photo with fighters there. Within days, Ukrainian rockets had reduced it to rubble. Currie recalls seeing the image pop up on open-source intelligence channels, as investigators, both amateur and professional, around the world scrambled to identify its location. “There were clues like a sign on a building we were looking at. Then I woke up the next day and someone had cracked it and the Ukrainians had taken it out.” The casualties for Wagner were reportedly grave. Prigozhin himself had been photographed at the base just before the strike, but he soon resurfaced at a high-profile funeral elsewhere, disproving rumours he’d been killed. Russian outlet Medusa reports that, before the invasion, Prigozhin had somewhat fallen out of favour with the Kremlin, publicly feuding with many of its high-ranking officials and other oligarchs. A large Wagner force was not deployed to Ukraine until the end of the war’s first month, when UK intelligence said more than 1000 mercenaries had joined the fighting. What does Wagner mean for the Ukraine war, and for Putin?
As the first Russian missiles fell on Kyiv, Wagner mercenaries were reportedly already prowling its streets with orders to hunt down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. (Ukraine’s military later posted photos of dog tags it said belonged to the dead “Wagnerists” whose assassination plots it foiled.) Many months on, Ukraine continues to win back ground, and Russia is increasingly turning to Wagner in tight spots. The private army appears to have been allocated entire sections of the frontline like a normal military unit, according to UK Ministry of Defence intelligence. At times, they are helping command squads. But, while the mercenaries have had greater success against Ukraine’s seasoned fighters of the Donbas (compared to a Russian army beset by low morale and inexperience) the group, and the other rag-tag mix of “volunteers” the Kremlin has deployed to Ukraine, is unlikely to win the war for Russia. Already, Wagner appears to be feeling the pinch of poor co-ordination across the wider Russian military machine. And it is thought to be suffering its heaviest losses of any conflict so far, such is the scale of the fighting. While Currie says there is still strong support for Putin among Wagner channels online, she is seeing frustration too. “We don’t have exact figures of how many Wagner mercenaries died [in the recent strike on their Luhansk base] for example, but it was a lot. Enough to generate frustration. There’s quite a legacy of Wagner mercenaries feeling abandoned to an extent by Russia.” Ex-Wagner fighter Gabidullin, for example, has hit out at the Kremlin for abandoning his team at that US airstrike during the 2018 battle in Syria, and for using Wagner to hide Russian army casualties.
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