A very short story of Wagner Group's rise
How the Wagner Group originated and became the Kremlin's go-to force for illegal activity around the world.
This is a guest essay by my dear friend Alastair Nicol, a Master’s graduate of the University of St. Andrews, a school in Scotland well-known for its security studies programs. Alastair has researched warfare and conflict throughout his studies and wrote a dissertation about the Wagner Group. I’m happy to give him the space to share his work. And if you enjoy it — let us know in the comments, and Alastair might come back with another piece!
If good and evil were defining features of world politics, the Wagner Group would make a fine candidate as a villain. Their name comes from the fact that their military commander, Dmitry Utkin, has an appreciation for Hitler’s favorite composer. Their logo is that of a skull.
Wagner is nothing more than a bunch of murderers for hire: mercenaries. The group gave Vladimir Putin plausible deniability in 2014 when he went for Donbas and Crimea. It also led Russia’s successful push in now-occupied Bakhmut — a Ukrainian town that was obliterated during one of the war’s bloodiest battles.
Today, Wagner is often overlooked following its leader’s assassination.
Yet the group lives on: it was rebranded into Africa Corps and has continued wreaking havoc in Africa and beyond under the Kremlin’s control.
Here’s a very short story of Wagner’s founding, its rise before 2022, and the role it played in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Early Beginnings
Wagner’s origins can be traced to a security organization called the Moran Group, a legal Russian private security company offering anti-piracy services off the Horn of Africa.
In 2012, an off-shoot of the Moran Group was set up in Hong Kong under the name the Slavonic Corp. Within a year, they had been hired by a Syrian oligarch affiliated with the Assad regime.
The operation began with recruited fighters signing their contracts on their legs while waiting at the train station in Moscow. More than 250 men were hired and were told that their job was defending oil fields on behalf of the Syrian Ministry for Energy.
The operation resulted in utter failure. The Slavonic Corp was provided with shoddy equipment and sent into Syria not to defend oil fields like expected, but rather to retake oil fields from combatants numbering anywhere from 2,000-6,000 fighters. Units were forced to retreat against an overwhelming hostile force.
Unlike the Moran Group – whose services technically counted as ‘security’ – the Slavonic Corp were actively participating in typical mercenary work. At the time, this broke both the Russian constitution and law, but that didn’t matter as long as the Kremlin benefitted.
Yet the Moran Group’s operations in Syria weren’t successful and had resulted in a political embarrassment. Upon returning to Moscow, two of the leaders of the Slavonic Corp – Vadim Gusev and Evgeny Sidorov – were arrested by the FSB. This was the first arrest under Article 359 of Russia’s Criminal Code which outlaws ‘mercenary activities’. Yet not all of the Slavonic Corps leadership were arrested. One particular leader was allowed to go free. His name was Dmitry Utkin and his nom de guerre was Wagner.
Wagner’s Leaders
Dmitry Utkin is a shadowy figure. He was first noticed during the Slavonic Corp’s aborted attempt at private military work in 2013. Before that, Utkin was a lieutenant colonel in Russia’s foreign military intelligence and was a veteran of both Chechen wars. While much is shrouded in mystery, Utkin likely led the military aspect of Wagner’s operations. While his better-known associate Prigozhin is the key link to the Kremlin, Utkin also maintained a political connection and was photographed at a military awards gala in Moscow in 2016.
Speaking of Prigozhin, he too has an interesting story. Nicknamed “Putin’s Chef”, his links with Putin date back to at least 2000 when Putin brought visiting Prime Minister of Japan Yoshiro Mori to Prigozhin’s restaurant. The relationship grew from there, and Prigozhin went on to land catering contracts in the Kremlin as well as serve Putin for his birthday in 2003. Prigozhin is also the founder of the Internet Research Agency, a notorious troll farm in St. Petersburg that was instrumental in Russia’s interference in US elections in 2016.
For years, Prigozhin denied his connection to both Wagner and the troll farm, but eventually, he took credit for both.
While Prigozhin and Utkin were yet to take on their public notoriety, 2014 was the moment when their Slavonic Corp stepped out of the frying pan, and into the fire that would become Wagner.
Note from Nastya: For more fascinating context about Prigozhin and his troll farm, read Lawfare’s piece: Yevgeny Prigozhin, We Knew Him When AND listen to Lawfare’s podcast episode about the Internet Research Agency.
Invading Ukraine in 2014
The events surrounding Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 were intentionally fast-paced. Using a strategy of maskirovka – masquerading – in which an opponent’s ability to understand events is actively hindered, Russia deployed so-called ‘little green men’ in a concerted effort to take out Ukrainian military units and occupy the peninsula. It was later found that many of the troops that lacked insignias were originally involved in the Slavonic Corps and were part of Wagner.
Wagner’s role in Crimea was murky but limited. By contrast, their role in Donbas was more noticeable. They supplemented Russian proxies in battles such as the bloody push for Debaltseve and took on special operations, such as taking out commanders from unruly Russian-led militants posing as separatist leaders. In one case, they went so far as to establish and train a proxy unit called Karpaty – the Carpathians. At this point, Wagner was a tool for the Kremlin that Putin could use while (barely) plausibly denying involvement.
Deir al-Zour
By mid-to-late 2015, Wagner’s operations had largely moved to a new front: Syria.
Initially, Wagner was there to reduce the battlefield deaths of regular Russian forces. They were estimated to have had 2,000-2,500 active personnel and such an important role in taking control of Palmyra in March of 2016 that Wagner members grew vocally frustrated at Syrian forces being overly credited for the victory. Here, they had acted in accordance with Russian policy and had even been supplied by Russian forces with at least one Mi-8 helicopter.
As 2017 came around, Prigozhin began to lease out Wagner. The group was enlisted to ‘liberate’ and secure oil fields in return for some of the oil output.
In 2018, Wagner was deployed to take the Conoco gas plant near Deir al-Zour. Prigozhin had been reported as bragging to Syrians that a “fast and strong” move would retake the plant in favour of the Assad regime. Yet, the gas plant they moved towards crossed a deconfliction zone border in eastern Syria. This meant that Wagner had just moved into US-controlled territory. American military leadership communicated with the commands of regular Russian forces “before, during and after” the fight, but the Russian command – under Russia’s Ministry of Defence – claimed to not have command over the mercenaries.
Wagner’s attempt at capturing the gas plant was impressive given that they had only been operating for a matter of years. Unfortunately for them, however, they had not only come up against US forces but forces that were part of the Joint Special Operations Command. This mixture of Delta Force soldiers and Rangers was supported by Reaper drones, F-22 fighter jets, F-15E strike fighters, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships, and AH-64 Apache helicopters.
Not only were no US personnel killed but Wagner was forced into an unsupported retreat back across the deconfliction zone until they could be flown out to Russian hospitals.
It was a stark reminder of Wagner’s place in the international order, but it would not halt their ambition.
Scrambling to Africa
In late 2017, a Russian company called M-Invest began work with the Sudanese government to prospect gold. As part of this deal, Sudanese president al-Bashir announced that a Russian company would be sending “specialists” who could prepare “Sudanese government military units”. The company was owned by Prigozhin, and the specialists in question were Wagner.
Since 2017, Wagner has operated in several countries across Africa including, but not limited to, Libya, Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Mozambique. From being associated with a mass execution of 300 civilians in Mali to laying ‘booby-traps and minefields’ on the outskirts of cities in Libya to training various African militaries, Wagner has found a space with rich financial pickings.
Not only did Prigozhin’s companies profit from their various extraction rights, but they also created means for Prigozhin to launder money and circumvent various sanctions. Money was not the only resource Wagner was able to extract from Africa, however. As Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Wagner would draw local troops from states like the Central African Republic into their fight in Europe.
Full-scale invasion of Ukraine
Russia’s plan to take Kyiv in three days failed spectacularly, and as early as March, Russia began to deploy Wagner to supplement its demoralized forces.
One of the more notorious operations undertaken by Wagner was the Battle of Bakhmut, a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast that fell to the Russians in May of 2023.
For a group that had initially operated with 2,000 fighters, Wagner’s involvement in Bakhmhut was staggering. As of spring 2023, US estimates placed their losses into the tens of thousands while British Defence placed their number of fighters at 50,000. A minority of these were the original security forces of the earlier Donbas war and Middle East operations while some were fighters recruited from African prisons. The majority - perhaps as many as 40,000 - were Russian convicts hired without direct permission from the Kremlin.
Before the group had been filled with convicts, Wagner fighters were known in Ukraine as some of the toughest and most well-trained Russian fighters. They were also known as war criminals, who killed, tortured, and raped civilians. “We killed everyone — women, men, pensioners, and children, including little ones, five-year-olds,” one soldier recounted.
Wagner also succeeded in securing the town just north of Bakhmut called Soledar. Prigozhin, in typical fashion, tried to use the opportunity to gain income from the salt mines in the town. Yet the Russian Ministry of Defence not only claimed this victory but did so with little mention of Wagner’s efforts.
This wasn’t surprising: since the Fall of 2022, there has been much tension between Russia’s military leadership and Prigozhin, who openly criticized Russia’s then-Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu for corruption and Russia’s war failures. (Do not mistake Prigozhin for a good anti-regime guy, his problem with the Russian army was that it wasn’t killing Ukrainians effectively enough.)
The tensions between Shoigu and Prigozhin kept brewing and in early February 2023, it escalated into outright hostility between the two. Throughout its operations, Wagner had been growing more autonomous and, to its detriment, more disagreeable. Prigozhin publicly declared that Shoigu was denying ammunition provisions and went so far as to suggest that the Ministry of Defence’s (in)actions were treasonous. While the Ministry of Defence denied this, the Kremlin simultaneously banned Wagner’s recruitment from prisons.
What followed was an astonishing march on Moscow, which failed and ultimately led to Prigozhin and Utkin being shot out of the sky in August 2023.
Final thoughts
Wagner’s story invites us to reconsider how we understand such groups as the Wagner Group.
It is an oversimplification to say they were either a re-branded Russian military unit or merely a private military company. At times, they are a security firm, providing training. At others, they supplement Russian regular forces. In one operation, they might support Russian policy and in the next, engage in outright mercenaries to the Kremlin’s detriment.
They resemble varyingly thugs, militias, a multinational company, an extension of the GRU, and – for a time – a millionaire’s personal private army.
For Western countries who generally need clearly-demarcated enemies before employing force, such confusion is a recipe for inertia. The real question is whether we in Europe and the West still have the creativity to change with the times and adapt, instead of pulling back.
This was very helpful, especially the information on Utkin who I was not aware of. I also agree with the comment about learning to adapt to fight these new types of entities. I think Ukrainians showed the way with the development and deployment of drones against Russia. While drones, per se, weren't a new concept, the extent to their use as weapons of war was new. Ultimately, though, it comes down to the ambitions for greed and power that men use to force their wants on the rest of society.