Like the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s previous imperial adventures in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, the emergence of the Wagner Group is consistent with Russia’s political development under Vladimir Putin. The regime rests on the corrupt control of privatized capital, and Wagner embodies the two trends that have come to define it.
ATLANTA – For Russians, the name Wagner no longer calls to mind the famous nineteenth-century composer of Der Ring des Nibelungen – at least not directly. Instead, Russians associate the name with the Wagner Group, a company of mercenaries that has committed some of the worst atrocities in Ukraine (and elsewhere). The Wagner Group is now so bound up with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions that it fancies itself as a rival to the Russian army – an institution that the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, openly mocks for its myriad failures in Ukraine.
ATLANTA – For Russians, the name Wagner no longer calls to mind the famous nineteenth-century composer of Der Ring des Nibelungen – at least not directly. Instead, Russians associate the name with the Wagner Group, a company of mercenaries that has committed some of the worst atrocities in Ukraine (and elsewhere). The Wagner Group is now so bound up with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial ambitions that it fancies itself as a rival to the Russian army – an institution that the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, openly mocks for its myriad failures in Ukraine.