Wagner Group Private Military Company Volume 2

Wagner Group Private Military Company Volume 2: Establishment, Profile and Operations 2013-2023

Examines the predecessors to the Wagner Group, its activities in a number of conflicts around the world, and its armed mutiny against the top leadership of the Russian Federation. The Wagner Group is symbolic of Russia's deployment of private military companies (PMCs) to exercise influence in Africa, the Middle East and Europe since the mid-2010s. Nominally an independent commercial enterprise, but actually operating on behalf of the Russian government, and in close cooperation with the Ministry of Defence and its Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and the Federal Security Service (FSB), it has been deployed to perform a very wide range of military and paramilitary tasks, provide security, and collect intelligence. Through much of its existence, the activity of the Wagner Group appears to have been clandestine and poorly recorded. In practice, the operating principles of this PMC have been very similar to those of numerous similar enterprises from the West. AUTHORS: János Besenyo is a professor in Óbuda University (Hungary) and head of the Africa Research Center. Between 1987 and 2018, he worked as a professional soldier and served in several peace operations in Africa and Afghanistan. He received a PhD in military science from Miklós Zrínyi National Defense University and a habilitated doctorate at Eötvös Lórant University.