Wagner Reborn? The Metastasis of Russian Mercenarism

CSDS POLICY BRIEF • 9/2024

By Patrick Wouters

11.4.2024

Key issues

• The metastasis of Russian mercenarism will make it even more difficult to formulate a policy for Western actors to track and target sanctions against their mafia-like practices and violations of human rights, as well as countering influence.
• The National Guard and the regular army are competing for ex-Wagner Group legionnaires, to be re-engaged in Ukraine or recruited into the new Africa Corps. Private Military Companies are setting up smoke screens for mercenaries serving the Kremlin’s interests, thereby wisely avoiding the critical mass of integrated corporation.
• Blatant disinformation suggesting the “denazification” of Ukraine, and freeing Africa from “Western neo-colonialism”, is cynically opposed to Russia’s real mercenarism: namely, venerating fascist emblems while undermining democracy, ignoring human rights and stealing natural resources.

 

Introduction

23 August 2023, 18:20 Moscow time. An Embraer business jet with the leadership of the Wagner Group, including its founder, Dmitry Utkin, and its Chief Executive, Yevgeny Prigozhin, on its passenger list, disappears from the radar screen. As does the most influential and notorious Russian Private Military Company (PMC) of the moment: Wagner Group. Less than four weeks earlier, the boss of the Wagner Group had initiated an insurrection, claiming his troops in Ukraine were being starved of ammunition by Russia’s Defence Minister, Sergey Shoigu. Prigozhin’s feud with Shoigu and the Chief of Defence, Valery Gerasimov, had developed into a turf war over the control of the mercenary enterprise and vast money-making machine that Wagner Group had become in Africa and beyond. Renegade Prigozhin had poisoned the public discourse by claiming that Russia went to war ‘for the self-promotion of a bunch of bastards’ in one of his typical expletive-laden diatribes blaming Russia’s military leadership for poorly planning the invasion and embarrassing the military. He even speculated that ‘the defence ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO’.

Prigozhin’s unrelentless criticism, however, had been gaining traction among top military ranks, notably with the Deputy Defence Minister, Mikhail Mizintsev, and Sergey Surovikin, the General who recently led Russia’s war in Ukraine. Wagner Group troops took to the streets of Rostov-on-Don and occupied key buildings without meeting tangible resistance. In a move that even surprised the Federal Security Service (FSB) security services, Prigozhin then urged everyone ‘to get out of the way’ of his armoured convoy heading towards the capital city. Allegedly, the purpose of his warriors’ march toward Moscow was ‘to prevent the destruction of his mercenary enterprise and to bring to justice those who, through their unprofessional actions, made a huge number of mistakes’. Faced with the prospect of more Russian blood being spilt, however, he ordered his rogue convoy to stand down. Moments later, Prigozhin left Rostov to the cheers and applause of the local population after securing immunity from prosecution, under the proviso of a forced exile to Belarus; a deal purportedly brokered by Alexander Lukashenko and approved by Putin. Yet Prigozhin’s attempt at damage control by claiming that the ‘march toward Moscow was a demonstration of protest and not intended to overturn power’ would fail to assuage the existential challenge that the leader of the Kremlin had perceived to his regime. And in Putin’s world, there can only be one consequence to such a threat.

As long as the strategic priorities of the Wagner PMC aligned with the geopolitical vision of the Kremlin, and the political engineering effected by the Group across multiple continents suited his aims, Putin allowed Yevgeny Prigozhin to enrich himself and reinvest the proceeds in his business enterprise. However, when the ego and the independence of the warlord became a liability to his power, Putin sought ways to quietly end his influence on public opinion and popularity among the rank and file.

This CSDS Policy Brief will set out how the vitiation of Wagner Group resulted in a mutiny and the subsequent fragmentation of its mercenary forces across a diffused set of law enforcement agencies and state-sponsored PMCs operating to ‘fight for justice and the interests of Russia on any continent’. It will then be argued that the metastasis of Russian mercenarism will make it even more difficult to formulate a policy for Western actors to track and target sanctions against their mafia-like practices and violations of human rights, as well as countering their influence peddling in failing or failed states. It will highlight how such a policy will need to expose Russian disinformation in the eyes of public opinion and require a balance between the security concerns of authoritarian regimes and the Western adherence to the values of democracy and human rights.

The endgame of Prigozhin’s Wagner Group

With the benefit of hindsight, analysis shows that the first nail in the coffin of Prigozhin’s commercial venture was the decree of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu ordering all “volunteer detachments” to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence. Sensing a hostile takeover of his company, Prigozhin categorically refused compliance with the decree. In passing, he publicly insulted Shoigu and Gerasimov while endorsing Surovikin, stating on his Telegram platform:

‘the Wagner PMC is organically integrated into the overall system […] has the deepest experience and is a highly effective structure. Unfortunately, most military units do not have such efficiency, precisely because Shoigu cannot properly manage military formations […] and since Surovikin is a smart, competent and experienced commander, the tasks that the Wagner PMC developed together with Surovikin and carried out on his behalf showed a high level of efficiency and success’.

Arguably, the second nail in Wagner Group’s coffin was the search warrant issued on 6 July 2023 for the offices and residence of Prigozhin, seizing cash, gold, weapons, passports and, oddly, wigs. Commenting on the event, Lukashenko offered the unsolicited opinion that ‘President Putin would not kill Prigozhin’, thereby alluding in a rather ominous way to the future of the Wagner Group leader. A similar concern had been raised by the former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director,  David Petraeus, when he cautioned Prigozhin to be ‘be careful around open windows’. In the ensuing weeks, Prigozhin’s business jet was observed flying between Minsk, St. Petersburg and Moscow, leading to speculation as to whether and how the Wagner Group would continue to operate under his control, especially after public appearances with some of Africa’s top leaders in the margin of a summit with President Putin. The question would be resolved less than a month later.

The metastasis of Russian mercenarism

Thanking ‘those soldiers and commanders of the Wagner Group who made the only right decision not to go for fratricidal bloodshed’, President Putin offered them three options: 1) follow their leader in exile to Belarus; 2) return to their families and friends; or 3) sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence or other law enforcement agencies, allowing them to continue serving Russia.

The first option would eventually be exercised by approximately 3,000 Wagner Group mercenaries, who were accommodated in tent camps on a military base close to Minsk, albeit without their heavy weapons and tanks, which were to be returned to the custody of the Military Intelligence Service (GRU) by Kremlin decree. By February 2024, however, less than 1,000 soldiers would remain in the “train and assist” role for which the Belarussian army had offered them contracts at far less lucrative conditions than their previous employ.

By his own estimate, approximately 32,000 ex-convicts who were recruited for the “Special Military Operation” took the second option and returned home, after being released at the end of their contracts. Besides the fact that this number seems exaggerated – given that up to 50,000 convicts took the conditional amnesty deal, of which 30,000 were estimated to have been killed in combat –, Prigozhin added, on a somewhat cynical note, that less than 1% of that total had joined the statistics of repeat offenders, supposedly 15% less than re-offenders among released convicts that were not bestowed with the honour to serve in Ukraine. Of those who returned home, some appear to have signed contracts with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord, who openly feuded with Prigozhin before his death. Kadyrov claimed on Telegram that a big group of former Wagner Group fighters had joined his ranks and were training with his own Akhmat special forces. Many others have instead chosen to join other mercenary groups with close ties to Russian security forces and pro-Kremlin oligarchs under the control of the GRU.

This brings us to Putin’s third option: in an effort to preserve their valuable combat experience and continued service to Russia’s military operations, the remainder of Wagner Group’s seasoned fighters were to be enrolled directly in the regular Russian army or a variety of “other law enforcement agencies”.

According to a RUSI report, the fate of the Wagner Group was decided in late June, right after Prigozhin’s mutiny, but – interestingly – before his unfortunate accident. Prigozhin was at the helm of a nebulous cloud of commercial ventures around the Concord company, including a network of subsidiaries and affiliate companies managing food and accommodation (i.e. Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting), private military and security services (i.e. the Wagner Group) and disinformation campaigns as well as astroturfing (i.e. the Internet Research Agency). Flooding social media through Facebook with opinions falsely ascribed to American citizens, the Internet Research Agency gained notoriety in the Mueller investigation after the 2016 United States (US) elections. It specialised in astroturfing, ‘an activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organisation (such as a corporation)’. Rich in this experience, it deployed the same tactics across Africa.

Following the business logic of Wagner Group, control of the business entities would be relegated to three agencies:

– the FSB would attend to the domestic security-related entities;

– the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) would take charge of the “influencing operations” conducted by the Internet Research Agency, which has expanded its social media manipulation to the African continent using local subcontractors and native speakers to obfuscate the attribution of disinformation campaigns. Indicative of the spread of these disinformation campaigns was a probe conducted by the Stanford Internet Observatory revealing that 73 Facebook pages have been linked to more than 1.7 million Facebook accounts in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique and Sudan; and,

– the GRU would reconstitute a network of warfighting capabilities, both for Ukraine and Africa, run covertly by the GRU itself or by pro-Kremlin oligarch-contractors, but explicitly avoiding the critical mass of a single integrated corporation similar to Concord and Wagner Group.

The fragmentation of Wagner Group’s human resources

In a two-pronged effort to preserve the hallmark of the Wagner Group, Pavel Prigozhin – inheritor of his father’s empire – allegedly attempted to retain some control over the group by offering it as a constituted unit of the National Guard “Rosgvardia”. At the same time, and according to Telegram channels known for leaks from Russian security services, he negotiated with the Russian Ministry of Defence the handover of Wagner Group’s assets in Syria and Africa in exchange for resolving Wagner Group’s debts. These efforts were largely thwarted by the reality that many Wagner Group operatives, taking agency over their own future, scattered across the three options mentioned above and the multiple “safe heavens” being offered to them, resulting in a widespread fragmentation and competition for Wagner Group’s human resources.

With the vision to create a rearguard force to suppress domestic dissent, combat terrorism and repel “colour revolutions”, in 2016 Putin stood up “Rosgvardia” by repurposing existing units from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and subordinating them directly to the Kremlin. Rosgvardia is currently commanded by Viktor Zolotov, a former bodyguard of Boris Yeltsin and member of the Siloviki – persons who work for any state organisation that are authorised to use force against citizens or others, (also known as the inner circle of the Kremlin). While its official mission is to ensure public order and guard against terrorist attacks, its mandate seems to have been broadened, as evidenced by deployments to several theatres including Crimea, Syria and Belarus. Rosgvardia has recently created a special brigade to receive former Wagner Group operatives, but it is unclear how many have joined their ranks.

Almost simultaneously, the Kremlin appointed Wagner Group veteran Andrei Troshev to recruit and oversee volunteer units in Ukraine after a meeting with President Putin and General Averyanov, a GRU commander linked to attempted assassinations (e.g. the Skripal case) and coups (e.g. in Montenegro in 2016). While some of these mercenaries are still wearing Wagner Group insignia, many have been recruited by alternative PMCs such as “Redut” and “Convoy”, which function as smoke screens that provide “plausible deniability” for the direct participation of the Russian state, but are fully funded and controlled by the Kremlin. To avoid the loss of control experienced with Prigozhin, all mercenaries are to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence before being enrolled by the proxy-PMCs.

Given the opaque nature of the Russian security sector, the differences in remuneration schemes and the rapidly evolving loyalties of the mercenaries involved, it is as yet unclear how many have been recruited by each of these entities. As of March 2024, the grand total of irregular Russian proxy warriors was estimated to be around 20,000 and while the multinational composition of these contingents has been evolving significantly since the enrolment of Cuban, Nepalese and Chinese mercenaries, it should be noted that – in contrast to the Prigozhin era – all of them have contractually pledged allegiance to the Russian state, regardless of their employer’s status.

The Russian expeditionary “Africa Corps”

As can be read in an uncharacteristically candid opening statement dated 23 August 2023 on its Telegram pages:

‘the decision to create the Africa Corps as part of the Russian Defence Ministry was made in the summer of 2023 after the St. Petersburg Russia-Africa summit in July 2023 to expand the Russian military presence on the African continent and the Middle East. Thanks in part to the efforts of Russian foreign diplomacy over the past few years, Western influence in a number of African countries has been reduced and a “window of opportunity” has opened for the implementation of our geopolitical interests. Consolidation of diplomatic successes is carried out by the military. Priority in recruitment is given to military personnel with combat experience who were part of the Special Operation Forces, as well as former and current employees of the Wagner PMC. The command staff of the corps consists of experienced combat commanders of elite units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and PMCs with rich combat experience, including in the Special Forces. Our profession is war, we fight for justice and the interests of Russia on any continent’.

The recurrent reference to Nazi symbols, such as the SS-tattoos displayed by Wagner Group’s co-founder Dmitry Utkin and the self-designation of Russia’s new expeditionary “Africa Corps” may seem somewhat inconsistent with Putin’s alleged goal of the “denazification” of Ukraine. Beyond the symbolism, though, the creation of the Africa Corps should be seen as the Kremlin’s reassurance of the African regimes who had hitherto relied on the Wagner Group for their survival and to consolidate control of Wagner Group’s business network, including its lucrative mining and drilling interests.

Under the leadership of the aforementioned GRU General Averyanov, new recruits and former Wagner Group fighters have been deployed to several Russia-friendly countries (e.g. Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic and Niger) to bolster Russia’s military operational presence in a bid to revive Moscow’s influence on the continent dating back to the Cold War at a time of steadfastly declining Western influence.

Conclusion

The textbook definition of metastasis is ‘the development of secondary malignant growths at a distance from a primary site of cancer’. While the primary site of Russian mercenarism should historically be ascribed to Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, it can be argued that Putin’s efforts to defeat its malignant grip on Russian domestic and overseas security challenges will have caused the plethora of secondary developments that have been discussed above. The effort to destroy its unified and integrated structure may well have been the explicit aim of the Kremlin’s staged and multi-pronged intervention, but the post-Wagner Group sequels will undoubtedly be even more difficult for Western actors to deal with.Indeed, the ways in which Putin’s proxy army supports Russian strategy and how the brazen use of the Wagner Group as a tailored murder weapon poses intractable challenges for the international community, its criminal prosecutors and its democratically controlled militaries have extensively been argued in a previous CSDS Policy Brief.

Similar to a metastatic disease, however, malicious cells will prove more difficult to track, counteract and target for sanctions. While mafia-like practices and violations of human rights perpetrated by Prigozhin’s mercenaries had found resonance with political and even public opinions, it is likely that the Western media will find less pertinence in dispersed mercenary battalions in Ukraine, unattributable disinformation and influence operations in African capitals or isolated “train-and-assist” efforts across the continent. “Following-the-money” through oligarch- and siloviki-hands, as well as focusing intelligence collection, will also face more legal and bureaucratic challenges, which the ubiquitous indignation towards Prigozhin’s shameless sledgehammer tactics had overcome.

As reported by The New York Times, the uncertainty around the sunset of Wagner Group operations in Africa provides a window of opportunity for the US, the European Union and France in particular to counter Russian influence. As one of ‘the most deeply enmeshed among the handful of African nations partnering with Wagner’, President Touadéra of the Central African Republic is indeed considering competing offers from Russia and Western countries – including the US – to replace Wagner Group as its primary security guarantor. According to the same source, the Biden administration has offered security assistance through the American private security firm Bancroft in exchange for the ouster of the Wagner Group.

However, the visit of General Averyanov to Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali should be seen as an effort to preserve Russia’s influence and absorb Wagner Group’s activities. To keep this endeavour financially sustainable, there is no doubt that the new actors will equally apply ‘the standard Russian modus operandi, which is that you cover the operational costs with parallel business activity’. Ultimately, for African leaders, Russia has been their loyal military-security partner throughout all these years, not the Wagner Group. The best the West can hope for is that the way in which Prigozhin was eliminated makesAfrican leaders reflect on their trust in Putin and the true motives of Russia backing their regime: (the perception of) protection and security in exchange for resources of any kind (hence, the reference to mafia-like practices).

That should not preclude Western actors – governmental and non-governmental – from castigating the massive disinformation around the Russian ends, ways and means, but it is now clear that offering a better sense of security to African populations and their leaders than the standard Russian modus operandi remains the biggest challenge in the quest to reconquer their hearts and minds. Short-changing democracy, ignoring human rights and stealing natural resources appeared to be the hallmark of Wagner Group in Africa. Arguably, these will remain the ingredients of future Russian mercenarism: one could brand it as “proxy-colonialism”. Balancing the merits of democracy, vetted information and human rights with a perceived sense of security is part of that challenge.