Discarding (by Re-Owning) a Proxy: The Wagner Group and the War in Ukraine

The chapter describes the setup, functioning, and demise of Russia’s infamous private military company, the Wagner Group, by focusing on the plausible deniability of state involvement that surrounded its activities. The chapter argues that the active participation of the Wagner Group in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during which it has fought in full interoperability with Russian regular forces, deconstructed this very deniability. By deploying Wagner in the full-scale war, pretenses to that end were abandoned, even as the control exercised by the Kremlin over Wagner’s activities briefly broke down during the group’s short-lived rebellion in June 2023.