The Birth, Evolution and Downfall of the Wagner Group

Old_Joe

For a long time I've been intrigued by Wagner and Prigozhin- wondering how such an operation could be allowed to flourish right under the nose of the Russian government and military. Following are severely abridged excerpts from a current Wall Street Journal report. I've edited these excerpts to focus primarily on exactly how the Wagner group began, evolved, and now, seemingly ends. It's a fascinating story, and I highly recommend that you check out the entire WSJ report.

The Russian government, which for years denied any association with Wagner, now appears to be trying to take over the far-flung mercenary network managed by Prigozhin and his lieutenants. “Wagner gave the state deniability" said a former special envoy for the West African Sahel region.

At minimal cost and at an arm’s length, Wagner helped the Kremlin amass international influence and collect revenues, managed by Prigozhin’s holding company Concord and a network of shell companies that helped funnel funds to the Kremlin, according to Western officials and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Wagner companies generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Africa, a crucial source of funding to maintain both Russia’s influence on the continent and to finance operations in Ukraine, Western officials said. The group’s sources of income include exports of Sudanese gold to Russia, as well as diamonds from the Central African Republic to the United Arab Emirates and wood to Pakistan, these officials said.

The fate of Wagner operations now hinges on whether the Kremlin can simultaneously marginalize Prigozhin and maintain the empire he built on three continents.

After years denying any Kremlin connections to Wagner, Putin said on Tuesday that the group had been financed by the Russian state for the year ending in May. In the Central African Republic, the Russian defense ministry—which first sent Wagner there in 2018—is paying for 3,000 of Prigozhin’s mercenaries, said Fidèle Gouandjika, the nation’s presidential security adviser.

A video which was part of this WSJ report made a number of very interesting assertions. Here's a short synopsis of some of those:

• The Wagner unit was originally created as an instrument of unconventional warfare, in order to create plausible deniability. The "little green men" who originally attacked Crimea and the east of Ukraine are an excellent example of this usage.

• Since Wagner's creation it has undergone a number of rebirths and transformations- it's evolved from a small guns-for-hire operation into a sprawling network of businesses that has been active on three continents, and currently has approximately 50,000 personnel deployed to the Ukraine.

• Putin has long used Wagner to do his dirty work. The WSJ examined shipping records, government databases, sanctions records, and corporate records to identify 64 companies linked to Prigozhin. More than half of those are being used as a complex network of front companies to hide the flow of money and materials that ultimately connect to the Kremlin.

• From the beginning, the Wagner Group was carefully engineered to hide it's connection from the Kremlin. The Wagner group made it's money through government contracts, supplying food and other supplies to the Russian Army. That money flowed from the Kremlin to the Wagner corporations, and was used to pay salaries, buy weaponry, and anything else that a military needs, but not obviously coming from the Russian state. Sanctioning of these front companies by the U.S. is ineffective, because as soon as one is sanctioned, another is created.

You can only imagine the frustration of the Russian armed forces as they were required to overpay for food and supplies. Given the almost total corruption at all levels, it was surely obvious to the high officers of the Russian military that they were being deprived of the kickbacks "rightfully" theirs, in favor of this "mysterious" corporation. It would seem obvious that as the Russian military establishment became aware of the real situation they would naturally have great animosity towards Prigozhin and Wagner, and bide their time looking for payback. That has seemingly played out now in Ukraine, with the publicly obvious conflict between Wagner and the Russian military.

Mark

What a mess.

hank

Thanks @Old_Joe - A comprehensive and substantive piece from the WSJ.
Really appreciate the excerpt + your own multipoint summary.

I dropped the WSJ and picked up the FT about a month ago. Both great publications. Once Amazon decided to kill its Kindle subscriptions, the FT became the better value for me.

Mark said:

What a mess.

+1

Crash

a pox on them all. Even Roland.
"Roland was a warrior,
from the land of the Midnight Sun.

With a Thompson gun for hire--- fighting to be done...."