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A screen grab captured from a video shows Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin making a speech in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24, 2023. (Wagner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Hudson recommended [[link removed]] giving Ukraine cluster munitions earlier this year, but the Biden administration only recently announced it will provide them. The White House has consistently lagged behind battleground developments, harming Ukraine's counteroffensive and enabling Russian victories like the Wagner Group’s brutal capture of Bakhmut.
Long before Yevgeny Prigozhins’s rise to public prominence at Bakhmut, mutiny against Moscow, and alleged but unconfirmed exile to Belarus, Hudson experts analyzed Wagner’s importance as a tool to project Kremlin influence across Africa and the Middle East.
Read their insights below, and follow our new Threads [[link removed]] account to stay up to date with Hudson’s work.
Key Insights
1. Wagner is most active in Africa.
The money funding Wagner comes from its notoriously smart game on the African continent. In this part of the world, especially the Sahel region of Africa, governments face Islamist insurgencies and terrorism risks. Their ability to tackle those threats is limited. Wagner offers a few hundred or a few thousand fighters, and these guys change the game there because they are professional. They play it very smart: instead of getting paid millions of dollars, in some extreme cases, they want mining deals like diamond fields and diamond mines. They want critical infrastructure deals like ports and airports.
Watch Hudson Senior Fellow Can Kasapoğlu’s full appearance on Scripps News. [[link removed]]
2. Wagner is like a Russian Hezbollah.
With its political agenda, independent combat operations edge, burgeoning warfighting arsenal, and quasi-military ventures, perhaps the closest geopolitical analog to Prigozhin’s private army is Hezbollah. The role Wagner might play in the postwar Russian Federation—particularly if the war comes to a conclusion following a decisive Ukrainian counteroffensive—could be very important to determining the future of the post-Soviet sphere.
Read Kasapoğlu’s full analysis of Wagner from the May 10 issue of Re: Ukraine. [[link removed]]
3. Wagner is not finished.
Those who claim that the thwarted mutiny has ended the Wagner saga have little, if any, understanding of Wagner’s geopolitical worldview. Above all, Wagner runs on revenues that do not predominantly stem from Ukraine, and the group does not live solely on Putin’s generous turf. Although the bulk of the Western strategic community associates Prigozhin’s forces with Bakhmut, the key to understanding Wagner is Africa. Contrary to mainstream Russian affairs research by most Western think tanks, Prigozhin’s footprint is not confined to the former Soviet space. Wagner’s warlord has a much larger vision.
Read Kasapoğlu’s coverage of the Wagner revolt. [[link removed]]
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
To get Kasapoglu's analysis of the latest open-source intelligence, subscribe to Hudson's Ukraine Military Situation Report [[link removed]] Go Deeper
Treat Russia as a Terrorist State [[link removed]]
Hudson Kleptocracy Initiative Research Fellow Nate Sibley [[link removed]] explains why the US should respond to Wagner’s global terror operations by designating Russia as a state sponsor of terror in National Review [[link removed]].
Read [[link removed]]
Wagner Group Becoming “Rival Power Center” to Russian Military [[link removed]]
On CNN [[link removed]], Hudson Senior Fellow Peter Rough [[link removed]] discussed Wagner’s willingness to fight even Western regulars in places like Mali and Syria.
Watch [[link removed]]
America’s Best Choice in Sudan Is the Least Bad Option [[link removed]]
Hudson Senior Fellow Josh Meservey [[link removed]] explains in a policy memo [[link removed]] why America has significant interests in Africa—and how Wagner’s involvement on the continent threatens those interests.
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