On the battlefields of Ukraine, near Bakhmut, Russian fighters have died in the thousands. Among them are prisoners, recruited to the front lines with the promise that if they could last six months, they could have their freedom. Evidence of mass graves shows they may not have made it that long.
Many of these Russian casualties are fighters for the Wagner Group, a murky paramilitary network led by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Wagner Group, and Prigozhin himself, have taken a very public — and potentially very risky — part in the war in Ukraine.
Russia for years relied on Wagner to do its bidding around the world in places where it did not want to openly commit troops or resources, where it could operate in a kind of gray zone. That granted Moscow a degree of plausible deniability as it exerted its influence and interests in other corners of the globe, from Syria to Mali to Venezuela. That has changed in Ukraine.
“The Wagner Group has come out of the shadows,” said Samuel Ramani, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense research group in London, and author of Russia in Africa. “Prigozhin is now claiming that he oversees the Wagner Group, and he’s actively and aggressively promoting Wagner as a symbol of this new kind of Russian patriotism.”
In Ukraine, Wagner is filling a specific operational and public relations need for Russia. The group bogged down and attrited Ukrainian forces at a time Russia’s military was in disarray. Wagner bought Putin time in advance of his eventual mobilization push, and, later, Russia’s preparations for a counteroffensive. The group’s fighters are on the verge of their most substantial victory, in Bakhmut, but it is one that has taken months and months, with an astounding casualty rate.
Wagner’s presence has reshaped the Ukraine conflict, but now that it’s out of the shadows, it may no longer serve Russia’s aims abroad in exactly the same way. But Wagner’s…
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