Explainer: Who are Russia's mercenary Wagner Group?
The private military company, owned by one of President Vladmir Putin's close allies, has been around since long before war began in Ukraine.
Although Russia sent around 190,000 troops to the Ukrainian border before they began the invasion, there are other more shadowy Russian forces fighting there.
According to a Times report on 28 February, more than 400 mercenaries of Russia's Wagner Group have been sent to Kyiv to assassinate the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, reports the Economist.
"Wagner almost certainly now commands 50,000 fighters in Ukraine and has become a key component of the Ukraine campaign," the UK Ministry of Defence said in January.
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Over the years, Ukraine has reported that the private military organisation, which appears to have close ties to the Kremlin, of fighting in Luhansk and Donetsk, the disputed parts of eastern Ukraine. However, the reports have not been confirmed.
"From a legal perspective, Wagner doesn't exist," says Sorcha MacLeod, who heads the UN's working group on the use of mercenaries.
Instead of a single entity, Wagner is a network of companies and groups.
Where did Wagner Group come from?
The Wagner Group has come under the spotlight for its role in the war in Ukraine.
The group was founded in 2014 and one of its first known missions was in Crimea, Ukraine, that same year, where mercenaries in unmarked uniforms helped Russian-backed separatist forces take over the area.
The European Union implemented sanctions against the group, which is known to be founded by Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian soldier adorned with Nazi tattoos. Allegedly, it was named after Hitler's favourite composer.
After Russia's official invasion of Ukraine last spring, Moscow initially used the mercenaries to reinforce frontline forces but has since come to increasingly rely on them in critical battles, such as those around the cities of Bakhmut and Soledar. The company, its owner and most of its commanders have been sanctioned by the US, UK and EU.
"Russia is engaging in a proxy war with plausible deniability," MacLeod says.
Using mercenaries instead of its own troops allows Russia to downplay its casualties. It also removes a layer of accountability: unlike soldiers, mercenaries are very hard to identify.
It is "almost impossible to hold them to account", says MacLeod.
Wagner mercenaries have been accused of human-rights abuses, and journalists investigating Wagner have been killed.
Who belongs to Wagner Group?
The Wagner private military company existed long before the war in Ukraine broke out and was made up of a few thousand mercenaries. Most of these were believed to be highly trained former elite soldiers. But as Russia's losses in the Ukraine war began to mount, the company's owner, Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, began to expand the group, recruiting Russian prisoners and civilians, as well as foreigners, reports Deutsche Welle.
In a video circulating online from September 2022, Prigozhin is seen in a Russian prison courtyard addressing a crowd of convicts, promising that if they served in Ukraine for six months, their sentences would be commuted.
The Wagner Group is now estimated to have as many as 20,000 soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Despite its increased presence in the war, the Wagner Group's effectiveness is not clear, with analysts suggesting the group suffers a large number of casualties without making significant advances.
Operating in a legal gray zone
The establishment of private military companies is illegal according to the Russian constitution, which states that the responsibility for security and defense lies solely with the state. Russia's Criminal Code prohibits citizens from serving as mercenaries but state-run companies are allowed to have private armed security forces. Such loopholes in Russian law allow the Wagner Group to operate in a semi-legal gray zone.
According to Deutsche Welle, the Wagner Group has worked in Africa, for instance, providing support and security for Russian mining companies and other clients. Russia has been accused of using the group as a tool to gain control over natural resources in Africa, as well as to influence politics and conflicts in foreign nations including Libya, Sudan, Mali, and Madagascar.
Wagner Group fighters were also known to be present in Syria.
Russia is not the only country with private military companies. Many other countries, including the United States, South Africa, Iraq, and Colombia, have private military companies operating inside and outside their own borders. Many such groups operate with a low profile. The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the United Nations have raised alarm about how many mercenaries and private military and security companies are engaged in current armed conflicts.
For Prigozhin, the work may be lucrative. Firms linked to him and Wagner have taken control of oil fields in Syria and diamond mines in car. Russia is not the only country to use mercenaries. Turkish groups, for example, are thought to operate in Libya. And some think Wagner's scale and political ties may be greatly exaggerated: the notion of a powerful, shadowy Russian organisation helps Putin to instil fear.
Indeed, Wagner's mercenaries have often been unsuccessful.
They pulled out of Mozambique in 2019 after jihadists started beheading them. And they fought on the losing side in Libya's civil war. Some people in the countries where Wagner operates are grateful for the support. In Mali, where the ruling junta is thought to pay Wagner $10m a month, people hope they will be more helpful at achieving stability than French troops were. But if Wagner's men are in Ukraine, where Ms MacLeod and her team are "monitoring the situation", few people will be glad of their presence.
Government sponsorship
But the Wagner Group stands out due to its close ties with the Russian government as well as its broad range of activities. While many private contracters focus on providing security services, the Wagner Group has been involved in a wide range of tasks in conflicts and civil wars.
The Wagner Group's mercenaries alleged embrace of far-right ideologies has also brought the group infamy. Dmitry Utkin, has close ties to a white supremacist, ultranationalist organization known as the Night Wolves, a motorcycle club sanctioned by the US, UK and EU, says Deutsche Welle.
The Night Wolves are thought to be tacitly supported by the Russian government, too, and social media is full of images of Wagner Group members promoting the Night Wolves' brand of far-right rhetoric.
