The Wagner Group: Rising Russian force

The mercenary force is growing in strength in Africa and is critical to Putin's war in Ukraine. Now its boss appears to harbour political ambitions

- Jonathan Eyal

The war in Ukraine is seen mainly as a confrontation between two national militaries: the invading Russian armed forces and the defending Ukrainian troops, both backed and supplied by international allies.

Yet there is one shadowy but significant actor in the Ukraine war that does not fit this definition. It is the Wagner Group, a supposedly private military company (PMC) that now has on its payroll an army of some 40 "hired guns" - many former criminals - to fight inside Ukraine on Russia's behalf.

The story of the rise of the Wagner Group into the world's most influential and arguably most dangerous mercenary organisation says a great deal about the condition of today's Russia, a country where a private army is allowed to trample on existing legal order.

Regardless of how the Ukraine war concludes, we are destined to hear much more about it. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin may be consumed by the monster he created.

The creation of the group is an integral part of Mr Putin's belief in the potential of "hybrid warfare", the strategy of undermining an opponent's country and seizing its territory without initially admitting any direct Russian responsibility.

The idea is not exactly new; in one way or another, many governments have used proxies for centuries. The difference is that in Mr Putin's recent playbook, the actors were essentially Russia's armed forces masquerading as supposedly independent military formations.

HYBRID WAR IN CRIMEA

These were the "Little Green Men", soldiers with no identifying markings, wearing green clothing which President Putin claimed "could be bought from any shop", who in 2014 appeared supposedly out of nowhere to seize the Crimea peninsula, until then part of Ukraine.