Inside The Wagner Group, Russia's Semi-Official Guns For Hire
showing Prigozhin’s armored BMW being stopped by authorities in St. Petersburg racked up millions of views on YouTube. “There’s no doubt that the release of embarrassing videos and details about Prigozhin’s business activities are aimed at taking him down a peg or two,” Weiss said.
The war may have faded from the international headlines, but in Ukraine it remains an urgent issue, with memorials to those who have died lining the capital’s main square. The conflict began when pro-Western protests in the same square forced the Russia-backed president to flee — prompting a bout of paranoia from Putin, who worried about losing influence in a country where the possibility of NATO and EU encroachment has long been seen by Russian leaders as an existential threat.
As the war dragged on, eastern Ukraine became a recruiting ground for Wagner as the group extended its operations to other countries. The rapid expansion saw a rising demand not for specialists like Utkin, but for grunts, whom critical Russian journalists sometimes refer to as “cannon fodder.” These men were often recruited from poor parts of Russia and from among the rebels in eastern Ukraine, where the economy has tanked under the rule of Russia’s proxies.
While more skilled Wagner operatives trained specialized Syrian army and pro-Assad militia units, the so-called cannon fodder filled out the front lines in battles against ISIS and rebel forces. Wagner has reportedly taken regular casualties in these battles. In the American mercenary model made famous by Blackwater in Iraq, contractors were mainly used to secure facilities, patrol the so-called “green zone” in Baghdad, and protect VIPs, freeing up US troops to focus on combat duties. In Syria, Russia has used its mercenaries the other way around — “leading in combat with Russian forces in support,” said Kofman, who is a senior research scientist at CNA, a defense research center in Virginia.
with the International Criminal Court on their behalf, said in a phone interview that those recruited as so-called cannon fodder for Wagner tend to be poor, lured by the promise of decent pay they couldn’t find otherwise in Russia’s faltering economy. Syria has been the first mission for many, Shabaev said, and the new troops often arrive to find conditions far worse than their recruiters had advertised.
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