What is the Wagner mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Vladimir Putin has leant on military contractors to claim victories in Ukraine but his former friend’s attempted mutiny and threats against Russia’s defence establishment have exposed cracks in the president’s authority

Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been supported on the battlefield by tens of thousands of mercenaries from a shadowy group led by a businessman and longtime ally of president Vladimir Putin.

The Wagner Group is a private military company that was under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin until his reported death in a plane crash on Wednesday 23 August.

The unit cut its teeth in deployments to Crimea – illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 – and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in the aftermath of that act and has since dispatched troops to several conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including the Syrian Civil War.

In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagner has been a key part of Moscow’s fighting force, but a power struggle between the Kremlin and the outspoken Prigozhin threatened – for 24 hours at least – to drag Russia towards a civil war of its own.

On Friday 23 June, Prigozhin accused his country’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, of “destroying” his fighters and concocting lies to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

Prigozhin called for an armed mutiny in an explosive rant on Telegram in which he vowed to stop the “evil” of the Kremlin’s top brass.

The Wagner Group’s leader did not go after Mr Putin personaly in his tirade, instead alleging that for more than a year — and after more than 350,000 casualties, a large portion of which Prigozhin’s men are responsible for — the Russian president had been deceived by Mr Shoigu.

“The war was needed... so that Shoigu could become a marshal, so that he could get a second Hero Star… The war wasn’t for demilitarising or de-Nazifying Ukraine. It was needed for an extra star,” Prigozhin declared on Telegram.

This outrage resulted in Prigozhin and his men leaving their posts in southern Ukraine and briefly occupying the city of Rostov-on-Don – a major logistics hub for the invasion of Ukraine – on Saturday 24 June. They then marched on Moscow along the M4 highway, shooting down a number of helicopters in the process.

Prigozhin then halted his advance approximately 125 miles from the Russian capital.

Following some intension negotiations with the Kremlin mediated by Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko, a deal was struck under which the mercenaries would move to Belarus in return for charges against them relating to the uprising being dropped.

Mr Putin said at that point that the fighters could either leave for exile, come under the command of the defence ministry or go back to their families.

Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin on a food factory tour in 2010 (AP)

Before embarking for Belarus, Wagner handed over its weapons to the Russian military, part of efforts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat posed by the mercenaries and avoid bloodshed on its own soil.

Prigozhin – a 62-year-old ex-convict sometimes known as “Putin’s chef” because his catering business has hosted dinners for the Russian president – had denied all links with the group until September last year when he announced he was “proud” to be its founder.

He said he founded Wagner to support Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas conflict.

“I cleaned the old weapons myself, sorted out the bulletproof vests myself and found specialists who could help me with this,” Prigozhin said. “From that moment, on 1 May 2014, a group of patriots was born, which later came to be called the Wagner Battalion.”

Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian intelligence officer, alleged to be its co-founder, was also reportedly killed in the plane crash that took out Prigozhin.

Armoured vehicles the streets of Rostov-on-Don on 24 June (Reuters)

Since its formation, Wagner has been accused of committing human rights abuses in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali, Mozambique and most recently Ukraine.

Prior to admitting his involvement, Prigozhin had a history of suing Russian and Western news outlets that alleged his ties to the group. His secretive stance was to protect the Wagner soldiers, he claimed.

Prigozhin was finally forced to confess his links with the outfit as the group rose to prominence in the Ukraine conflict. British intelligence puts the number of Wagner troops active in Ukraine at 50,000, comprising a quarter of Russia’s total strength.

War contractors are nothing new but military analysts say the Kremlin has been heavily reliant on Wagner due to the heavy losses incurred by official Russian forces during the war, along with difficulties in recruitment.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) first reported that Wagner had been deployed in Ukraine on 28 March 2022, a little over a month into the conflict, after Russian losses had already begun to hamper the pace of the initial assault.

Wagner has since then played significant roles in capturing towns such as Soledar, Popasna and Lysychansk – offering relative operational competence while the Kremlin has been forced to repeatedly switch around command of its own forces in the face of heavy losses.

Wagner fighters in a Soledar salt mine after Prigozhin claimed to have taken the town (Telegram)

Prigozhin had been at pains to claim victories for Wagner in Ukraine before his death, sometimes putting him at odds with the Kremlin line. He has even accused Russia’s defence ministry of taking credit for Wagner successes.

In the battle for Soledar, a small town subject to an intense assault as part of Russia’s still-ongoing campaign to take over the city of Bakhmut, Prigozhin said his mercenaries had triumphed over Ukrainian forces days before the Kremlin said its own troops had done the same.

Bakhmut is prized by Moscow as its capture would put Russian forces in a stronger position in the goal of capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas.

On 12 February, Prigozhin said Wagner had taken the village of Krasna Hora near Bakhmut, making no mention of Russian forces as Moscow began to launch a major offensive targeting the Donetsk town along with several other frontline settlements.

Wagner fighters posing outside the village of Krasna Hora (Reuters)

Speculation had raged over Prigozhin’s ambitions in Russian politics and there were signs that Mr Putin was sensitive to any potential challenges from his former cook before the plane crash rendered such concerns null and void.

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser who maintains contacts in political circles, said the Russian government had extracted a promise from Prigozhin that he would not create his own political movement or join a parliamentary party unless asked to do so by officials.

“They are a little afraid of him and find him an inconvenient person,” Mr Markov said in July.

The group, formally Wagner PMC (Private Military Company), recently moved its headquarters to an imposing glass high-rise in St Petersburg, which also acts as a technology centre and holds exhibits of advanced weaponry along grey corridors filled with camouflaged personnel.

The Wagner Group’s headquarters in St Petersburg (EPA)

Unsettling accounts of life in the mercenary group surfaced recently from former members including Andrei Medvedev, who sought asylum in Norway in January after deserting a Wagner regiment in Ukraine.

The 26-year-old said sergeants were ruthless in their attempts to recruit new fighters.

“They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleged in an interview with CNN.

“They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”

Andrei Medvedev in Oslo after fleeing Wagner command (Reuters)

The MoD said last July that Wagner was lowering recruitment standards to include formerly blacklisted individuals.

Mr Medvedev claimed he joined Wagner as a volunteer after serving in the Russian military. He said he and his fellow fighters were often sent into battle with little direction.

Two former Wagner fighters captured by Ukraine told CNN of devastating losses in assaults reminiscent of First World War infantry charges.

Recalling his first assault near the village of Bilohorivka in Luhansk, one said: “There were 90 of us. Sixty died in that first assault, killed by mortar fire. A handful remained wounded.”

The other fighter said he was involved in a push for Lysychansk on the Luhansk-Donetsk border.

“The first steps into the forest were difficult because of all the landmines spread out. Out of 10 guys, seven were killed immediately,” he said.

The fight went on for five days, he said. “There is no feeling attached to it. Just wave after wave. Four hundred [Wagner fighters] were brought there, and then more and more, all the time.”

Further evidence of brutality emerged on 14 February, as footage appeared to show a Russian convict who fought for Wagner being beaten to death with a sledgehammer after being accused of fleeing the war.

The UK’s opposition Labour Party is just the latest political organisation to demand the Wagner Group be classified as a terrorist organisation in response to its barbarous conduct in Ukraine and beyond.

Following Prigozhin’s failed mutiny and subsequent death exactly two months later, the future of the group and its role in the Ukraine war are now uncertain. Mercenaries have started to train Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few miles from the border with Nato-member Poland.

Prigozhin was shown in a video on welcoming his fighters to Belarus after the rebellion, telling them they would take no further part in the Ukraine war for now but ordering them to gather their strength for Africa while they trained the Belarusian army.

"The armed forces of Belarus continue joint training with the fighters of the Wagner PMC," the Belarusian defence ministry said.

Graves of Wagner fighters in a cemetery near the village of Bakinskaya (Reuters)

“During the week, special operations forces units together with representatives of the company will work out combat training tasks at the Brest military range.”

The range is just three miles east of the Polish border.

On Thursday 20 July, the UK announced a wave of sanctions against individuals and businesses involved with the Wagner Group in Mali, Central African Republic and Sudan.

These sanctions will limit financial freedoms by “preventing UK citizens, companies and banks from dealing with them, alongside freezing any assets held in the UK and travel bans,” the government website has said.

The UK government has accused the Wagner Group of operating in Mali, CAR and Sudan for several years and “aggressively pursuing Russian foreign policy interests in the region and providing military support to counter-terrorism operations which have seen hundreds of civilians killed.”

Prior to his death, Prigozhin was also sanctioned by the UK, as were several of his key commanders who participated in Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.