The Wagner Files
The Wagner Group might be a gang of hired murderers, but it is also a well-oiled machine: peel back its layers of barbarity and you’ll find a slick private military company with plans to expand its influence throughout the world. Experts, including US Congress, have long argued that Wagner is controlled by the Russian special services, specifically the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, commonly known as the GRU.
But this is wrong. I have been investigating Wagner for six months, and both sources in Ukraine and documents shown to me by the Dossier Center, an investigative project set up by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, tell a very different story. The company has never been under the GRU; nor does it report to the Ministry of Defence, with which it now has an increasingly fractious relationship, or any law enforcement or government agencies. In fact, unlike other Russian private or quasi-private military companies, such as Redut, it is funded and run by a single individual: Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in turn answers only to one man: Vladimir Putin.
Wagner, then, is vital to understanding the Kremlin’s emerging global strategy. Its mercenaries are not only butchering in Ukraine, but are also being deployed across Africa as the Kremlin seeks to hoover up the continent’s resources. As violence strafes Sudan, reports, backed up by my contacts on the ground, claim that Wagner supplied Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces with surface-to-air missiles in its battle for control of the state against Sudanese leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The group is also helping to prop up the regime in Syria and is busy meddling in Baltic states as well.
Late last year, as the war in Ukraine intensified, Prigozhin, who holds no official position, was considered by many to be more powerful than most federal ministers. Some argued he even held more sway in the Kremlin than Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But even if Prigozhin wouldn’t take orders from the Ministry of Defence, Russian sources tell me he would work with it when it suited his needs.
At the direct request of Putin or his office, the Ministry was forced to provide support — including weapons, tanks, fighter jets and military bases — to Wagner. In return, Prigozhin’s units would sometimes find themselves under the operational control of the Ministry of Defence or the Russian special services: this has been the case in Syria since February 2022. For the most part, however, Wagner remains an independent entity, which suits Prigozhin perfectly. If the invasion goes wrong in Ukraine, he won’t be the person responsible; if it goes well, he can point to his role in any success.
For the first time, documents handed to me by the Dossier Center reveal how Prigozhin finances Wagner, as well as many of his other projects. It is a web of dark money that spreads through dozens of countries. Prigozhin is linked to several hundred companies registered in Russia that received government contracts for various state functions, such as building military camps, organising rubbish collections, and supplying food for the military, hospitals and schools. From 2011 to 2018, these companies received more than 5,000 Russian state contracts worth 209 billion rubles (£2 billion), with some of these profits going to projects involving Wagner and so-called “political technologists” — those whom the Kremlin puts in charge of influencing political systems — abroad.
