Wagner Group - Private Military Company

Volume 1: Establishment, Purpose, Profile and Historic Relevance 2013-2023

by Janos Besenyo, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Endre Szénási and András István Türke

Imprint: Helion and Company

64 Pages, 8.3 x 11.7 in, 2 b/w photos, 4 color illustrations, 14 color photos, 21 color profiles, 3 color maps, 1 diagram

Paperback
9781804516096
December 2024
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Description
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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.

In the early 2010s the Wagner Group, a notorious private military company under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, began to emerge onto the world stage. This organisation first showed its hand in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and the civil war in Syria. It quickly became apparent that it had the blessing of the very highest levels of Putin’s government in Russia to act as an armed extension of the country’s foreign policy before a spectacular fall from grace following the mutiny in the summer of 2023.

The role of mercenary is as old as recorded human history and stretches back to the earliest days of civilisation. For those states unable to afford a standing army the mercenary offered professional services and could be viewed as a profession of honour. When the mercenary fell into disrepute in the post-colonial world of revolutions, coups and counter-coups, it was essentially banned by the Geneva Protocols in the late twentieth century. The trade of mercenary did not go away however, and instead morphed into that of the ‘private military company’ or PMC, a still thriving global trade in a world of clandestine operations, that may or may not be government sanctioned, offering ‘plausible deniability’ in a casualty-averse age of hybrid warfare.

Wagner Group - Private Military Company: Volume 1 - Establishment, Purpose, Profile and Historic Relevance 2013–2023 looks at the profession of arms as practiced by mercenaries throughout history and the emergence of the modern private military company in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, along with the failed Slavonic Corps and Moran Security Group, often mistaken for early incarnations of Wagner. This work examines the emergence of the Wagner Group, its connection to the Russian government, security and intelligence services, and its operations in Syria, Libya, Sub-Saharan Africa and Venezuela as an extension of Russian foreign policy, often displacing Western interests, and as a private organisation primarily concerned with securing access to the world’s oil and mineral resources for its owners and sponsors. Volume 2 will examine the group’s role in Russian operations inside Ukraine from 2014 onwards.

This volume is illustrated with original colour photographs showing the Wagner group’s activities and its iconography, along with colour artworks highlighting the unusual equipment employed in many of the group’s activities.

János Besenyő 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. In 2014, he established the Scientific Research Center of the Hungarian Defence Forces General Staff, and was its first leader from 2014 to 2018. His most recent publication is Darfur Peacekeepers: The African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur (AMIS) from the Perspective of a Hungarian Military Advisor.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Endre Szénási is a retired Field Artillery officer and a former strategic analyst of the Hungarian Ministry of Defence. He served as a professional soldier between 1988 and 2023. Following graduation at Kossuth Lajos Military High School (Hungary, 1989), Field Artillery Officers’ Advanced Course in the United States of America, Field Artillery Officers’ Staff Course (Hungary) he got his Masters’ Degree at the Miklós Zrínyi National Defence University (Hungary) receiving a Security- and Defence Policy Expert’s diploma in 2022. Between 1989 and 1995 he served at several Field Artillery units in Hungary as a subunit commander. He served as a professional duty officer in Cyprus at the UNFICYP HQ between 1995 and 1997. He was a senior strategic analyst of the Defence Policy Department of the Hungarian Ministry of Defence between 1997 and 2023, with multiple fields of expertise stretching from post-Soviet policies to global migration, energy security and climate change etc. He retired after 35 years of service as a professional soldier.

András István Türke is director of the Europa Varietas Institute (Switzerland) and senior research fellow of the Africa Research Institute (Óbuda University, Hungary). He is senior expert of the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, French MoD), of the Research Center of the General Staff (Hungarian MoD) and of the Peace Operations Research Network (CÉRIUM-ROP, University of Montréal). Between 2006 and 2011 he worked as visiting fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) as well as at the Assembly of the WEU - Defence Committee. Between 2013 and 2018 he was lecturer at several universities in Hungary. Dr. Türke holds a PhD degree in History of International Relations from the Sorbonne University (Paris III) and received a habilitated doctorate at University of Szeged (Hungary). His most recent publication is the contemporary history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi (chapters in a book on French-speaking Africa).