Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso Sudanese Revolution[45]Venezuelan presidential crisis (military training and security)[46][47]Insurgency in Cabo Delgado[48] The Wagner Group (Russian: Группа Вагнера, romanized: Gruppa Vagnera), officially known as PMC Wagner[9] (ЧВК «Вагнер»),[66] is a Russian state-funded[67] private military company (PMC) controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and since then by Pavel Prigozhin.

[69] Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.

[90] According to Bellingcat, evidence suggests Utkin "was more of a field commander" and "was not in the driver's seat of setting up this private army, but was employed as a convenient and deniable decoy to disguise its state provenance".

[124] Wagner's network of shell companies, reported to be primarily trading in illegally mined and extracted natural resources, has also been shown to have used Western banking systems to process funds without their knowledge.

[125] C4ADS's report on the leaked documents showed that without the use of legitimate financial institutions such as JP Morgan Chase and HSBC as intermediaries to facilitate the movement of funds, the Wagner Group would not have been able to establish a foothold in Africa.

[126] Based partly on leaked documents provided by the Dossier Center, investigative journalist David Patrikarakos has stated that Wagner has never been under the control of either the GRU or the Ministry of Defense, as has often been claimed, but is instead exclusively run by Prigozhin.

[132] According to a report published by Russian monthly Sovershenno Sekretno [ru], the organisation that hired personnel for Wagner did not have a permanent name and had a legal address near the military settlement Pavshino in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow.

[186] According to the SBU, Wagner employees were issued international passports in bulk by the GRU via Central Migration Office Unit 770–001 in the second half of 2018, allegations partially verified by Bellingcat.

[193] Private military companies are still illegal in Russia, but with their heavy participation in the war in Ukraine they have been legitimized by being referred by the Ministry of Defense and Russian government with the umbrella term of "volunteer detachments".

[208] On 26 August 2023, following Prigozhin's death in a plane crash in Tver Oblast, Putin signed a decree ordering Wagner Group fighters to swear an "oath of allegiance" to the Russian state.

[209] The Wagner Group is known to have operated in at least 11 countries; Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Venezuela, and Madagascar, spanning four continents, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia.

Wagner has played a significant role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where it has been reportedly deployed to assassinate Ukrainian leaders,[71] among other activities, and for which it has recruited prison inmates from Russia for frontline combat.

[72][73] In December 2022, United States National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby claimed Wagner had 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts.

[18] Following the end of major combat operations, the PMCs were reportedly given the assignment to kill dissident pro-Russian commanders that were acting in a rebellious manner, according to the Russian nationalist Sputnik and Pogrom internet media outlet and the SBU,[181][210] (other sources describe those who started to "turn up dead" and whose fate Wagner was suspected of being responsible for as "the most charismatic and ideologically driven leaders".

[227] The Times reported that the Wagner Group flew in more than 400 contractors from the Central African Republic in mid- to late-January 2022 on a mission to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and members of his government, and thus to prepare the ground for Russia to take control for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on 24 February 2022.

[56] During fighting near Popasna on 20 May, retired Major General Kanamat Botashev of the Russian Air Force was shot down while flying a Sukhoi Su-25 attack aircraft,[233] reportedly for the Wagner Group.

[240][241] On 22 December, United States National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby claimed that around 1,000 Wagner fighters were killed in fighting at Bakhmut during the previous weeks, including some 900 recruited convicts.

[257] Radio Liberty reported the contractors were possibly on their way to Sudan, citing video footage that showed Sudanese currency and a telephone card depicting Kassala's Khatmiya Mosque among the belongings of those who had been arrested.

[258] Russia confirmed the men were employed by a private security firm, but stated they had stayed in Belarus after missing their connecting flight to Turkey[259] and called for their swift release.

[261] During the contractors' detention, Russian media reported that the Security Service of Ukraine had lured the PMCs to Belarus under the pretext of a contract for the protection of Rosneft facilities in Venezuela.

He would use another arm of his business empire, a troll factory called the Internet Research Agency, to smear domestic opposition, popularize the client and further exploit grievances against the West.

In September 2022, The Daily Beast interviewed survivors and witnesses of a massacre committed by the Wagner Group in Bèzèrè village in December 2021, which involved torture, killing and disembowelment of a number of women, including pregnant ones.

[305] The group's presence in Libya was first reported in October 2018, when Russian military bases had been set up in Benghazi and Tobruk in support of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who leads the Libyan National Army (LNA).

[317][50] On 5 April 2022, Human Rights Watch published a report accusing Malian soldiers and Russian PMCs of executing around 300 civilians between 27 and 31 March, during a military operation in Moura, in the Mopti region, known as a hotspot of Islamic militants.

[51][318] On 28 July 2024, it was reported that "dozens" of Wagner mercenaries had been killed or injured by Tuareg rebels in fighting at the commune of Tinzaouaten near the Algerian border in the north of Mali as they were moving in a convoy with Malian government soldiers.

Turkey reported that 380 "blondes with blue eyes" took part in the conflict on the side of Artsakh, while some Russian publications put the number of Wagner PMCs who arrived in the region in early November at 500.

[417] In mid-December 2017, a powerlifting tournament was held in Ulan-Ude, capital city of the Russian Republic of Buryatia, which was dedicated to the memory of Vyacheslav Leonov, a Wagner PMC who was killed during the campaign in Syria's Deir ez-Zor province.

[429] Titled The Tourist, it depicts a group of Russian military advisors sent to the CAR on the eve of presidential elections and, following a violent rebellion, they defend locals against the rebels.

[434] On 29 September 2023, President Putin appointed former Wagner Group commander and retired colonel Andrei Troshev (nom de guerre Sedoi) to oversee volunteer fighter units in Ukraine.

[5] On 6 November 2023, the Kyiv Post released drone footage of what it claimed was Ukrainian special forces attacking Wagner PMC soldiers in Sudan with an explosive projectile.