Wagner Group Exposed: Prigozhin and Russia's Secret War Company

[00:00:22]In September of 2022, a video began circulating online of a man named Yevgeny Prigozhin at a prison in Russia speaking to inmates and offering them the chance to fight in Ukraine.

[00:00:39]Yevgeny Prigozhin was an acquaintance of Vladimir Putin's from St. Petersburg in the 1990s.

[00:00:45]He's close to Vladimir Putin.

[00:00:47]He actually got his start focusing more on catering businesses and restaurants, earning himself the nickname Putin's chef.

[00:00:54]In the beginning, he stayed in the shadows.

[00:00:57]He rarely appeared.

[00:00:59]He was named by some Western officials as being in charge of Wagner Group, but the Kremlin kept it very hush hush.

[00:01:04]They didn't want it to be known that this group really existed, they denied knowing anything about it.

[00:01:10]Wagner is nothing like what Americans might understand.

[00:01:14]It's a private military company.

[00:01:16]Wagner are mercenaries for hire.

[00:01:20]They massacre and rape civilians, they exploit, loot natural resources, and they carry it off, much of this back to the Kremlin.

[00:01:31]The significance of this video is it immediately ties Prigozhin to the Wagner Group.

[00:01:36]He'd always denied any involvement but here you have him on camera describing Wagner as his group and describing what they're doing.

[00:01:44]It was a way of planting the flag and saying, "I'm in charge here.

[00:01:47]I've got permission to do whatever I'd like."

[00:02:00]That is in fact the function of the coming out story, to convince us that that is the only story that there is to know.

[00:02:08]This is a business story at the end of the day.

[00:02:10]This is a story about the exchange of billions and billions of dollars for large scale weapon platforms, for train and equip missions, for oil and gas exploitation.

[00:02:22]What we're really seeing here is a very strange organization that doesn't look at all like your classic private military company.

[00:02:31]In fact, it's probably better to call it a state-backed paramilitary cartel.

[00:02:46]Are you a Russian soldier?

[00:02:50]The shadowy pro-Russian forces here violently took over government facilities.

[00:02:56]The Russian mercenaries were from the- Wagner Group.

[00:02:58]The Wagner Group. The Wagner Group, a shadowy security firm linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin.

[00:03:06]The tentacles of Wagner spread across Africa, Syria, and Ukraine.

[00:03:12]They relish in their brutality.

[00:03:15]Nothing could be more appropriate than designating it as a foreign terrorist organization.

[00:03:21]Could someone like Prigozhin ever actually threaten Vladimir Putin's hold on power?

[00:03:25]It's absolutely unclear how this will end.

[00:04:03]In the 10 years since its founding, the Wagner Group has evolved from a small guns for higher operation into a sprawling network of businesses that has been active on four continents.

[00:04:14]This is setting up a broader network of infrastructure where Wagner could potentially surge presence in response to a given opportunity or threat and also it creates the opportunity to sort of lily pad their influence from one country to another.

[00:04:32]Wagner currently has approximately 50,000 personnel deployed to Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts.

[00:04:41]President Putin wants Russia to be a great power again.

[00:04:46]He wants it to have control throughout not only Europe and Asia, but also in Africa and other parts of the world.

[00:04:54]He's been able to send in his mercenaries through Wagner to do the dirty work.

[00:05:00]The Wall Street Journal examined shipping records, government databases, sanctions documents and corporate records to identify 64 companies linked to Wagner's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

[00:05:14]We found more than half of those are being used by Wagner as a complex network of front companies to hide the flow of money and materials that ultimately connect to the Kremlin.

[00:05:25]Neither the Kremlin nor Prigozhin responded to requests for comment about our findings.

[00:05:30]The monies would flow back through the corporate form and they could be used to pay salaries, they could be used to pay weaponry, they could be used to pay for everything that a military needs, but not coming through the Russian state.

[00:05:48]It's always gonna be a game of whack-a-mole for the US and other governments because the more companies that are sanctioned, the more companies will be created to evade sanctions.

[00:06:09]Every part of what the Wagner Group does is directed by the state for the state to the profit of the state.

[00:06:17]But from the beginning, the Wagner Group was carefully engineered to hide its connection to the Kremlin.

[00:06:23]Ukrainian and Western officials say that the way it was done was Yevgeny Prigozhin through his catering company, Concord, was making money from defense industry contracts so he was getting contracts to provide food and other services for the Russian army, which he was then able to reinvest into the Wagner Group.

[00:06:42]It is a classic money laundering technique.

[00:06:45]Concord Catering was what it sounds like.

[00:06:47]It was set up as a catering company that had sweetheart deals with the Kremlin.

[00:06:53]So the Kremlin would pay it and it was the catering company.

[00:06:57]And then as part of that, there are ways to skim that money off the top and ensure that the money goes to the appropriate folks that Prigozhin wants to pay.

[00:07:08]It was through parts of that money flow that it's expected that Wagner got its start.

[00:07:16]The origin story of the Wagner Group is basically a battlefield rumor.

[00:07:23]At the beginning of the war in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, we saw a lot of guys without insignia, you know, the little green men running around and they were often talked about as not being there.

[00:07:38]The Kremlin always believed that Ukraine should be part of Russia and that naturally the Ukrainians should support Russia so it tried to foment a revolution, some kind of uprising in Eastern Ukraine.

[00:07:50]Russia used small mercenary groups to support pro-Russian separatists in their fight against Ukrainian forces.

[00:07:57]Now one of these groups was Wagner.

[00:08:00]Because they offered plausible deniability for the Russians, they could say that these were locals that had simply decided to rise up against the rulers in Kyiv.

[00:08:11]There are no Russian units in the east of Ukraine, no special services, no instructors.

[00:08:16]Those are all local residents.

[00:08:59]Dmitry Utkin was one of the original commanders in Wagner and in fact, his call sign was Wagner and that's what gave the unit its name.

[00:09:10]Now he was known as Wagner because of his neo-Nazi sympathies.

[00:09:14]Russia's attempt to foment an uprising in Donbas ultimately faced stiff resistance from the Ukrainian army.

[00:09:21]And according to the Ukrainian intelligence service, the Kremlin used Utkin and his Wagner unit to target pro-Russian separatists who opposed negotiating a ceasefire with Ukraine.

[00:10:04]Essentially, they were a death squad that was sent out to clean up any of the political problems that the Kremlin was dealing with during this negotiation process.

[00:10:12]The might of Wagner Group rose from year to year because they appear to be very effective for this Russian authoritarian regime.

[00:10:24]For Putin himself, he could hide any kind of his criminal activities using these kind of troops.

[00:11:06]In 2015, Russia intervened in the Syrian Civil War and Wagner was used to protect energy resources for the Assad regime.

[00:11:15]It was the beginning of a new business model for the group.

[00:11:18]And in return, they get a share of the natural resources, the looting of the country.

[00:11:26]It was a pivotal role in a conflict that put one of Russia's most important allies at risk.

[00:11:48]That meant Wagner and the Russian military fought against any combination of US-backed rebels, Kurdish forces, and ISIS.

[00:11:58]Wagner employed its fighters in Syria through a company called Evro Polis.

[00:12:03]Evro Polis was also the company the Syrian government hired to protect its oil fields.

[00:12:34]Ultimately these shell companies that are paying the salaries of Wagner Group fighters, they're nothing more than that.

[00:12:40]They're just paper pass throughs that allow Russia to manage money and men and make sure that there are no prying eyes in the deals.

[00:12:50]Oil was particularly lucrative for Wagner in Syria.

[00:12:54]Evro Polis's contract with the Syrian government shows that for every oil field it captured, it got 25% of production.

[00:13:03]25% of the natural resources, the energy resources that were able to be exploited.

[00:13:09]An incredible amount for a company far afield in Russia.

[00:13:15]By 2017, Wagner captured at least four of the country's largest oil and gas fields, which earned the group tens of millions of dollars per year from each field.

[00:13:25]Make sure that you secure the oil and gas, get it before the Americans get it or get it before the Kurds get it, but get there.

[00:13:31]That was the objective.

[00:13:34]Al-Shaer gas field in Homs is one of the largest in Syria.

[00:13:38]In 2017, Wagner worked with the Syrian military to defend it from ISIS.

[00:13:44]Many of the Syrian troops had been forced into service by the Assad regime.

[00:13:49]During a Battle with ISIS, some of those Syrian fighters tried to escape.

[00:13:54]Wagner found one of them and decided to make an example of him.

[00:13:58]His name was Muhammad Ismail.

[00:14:21]Wagner fighters filmed themselves as they tortured, killed, and mutilated Muhammad Ismail.

[00:14:27]We see kind of this impulse toward memorializing terrorizing incidents.

[00:14:33]This helps with the kind of psychological effects.

[00:14:35]Don't mess with us.

[00:14:37]We're coming and when we come, be prepared.

[00:14:51]In 2018, Wagner forces attempted to capture the Conoco gas plant in Kasham from US-backed rebel forces.

[00:15:18]There was already kind of a lot of tension leading up to the Battle of Kasham, and then when the Russian regular forces couldn't give the Americans an answer, a satisfactory answer as to who was down there doing that fighting creeping toward the Conoco gas plant, well, it was kind of all bets off.

[00:15:35]The US military sent up a whole bunch of air cover and it was an absolute bombardment.

[00:15:53]Even though Wagner lost the fight for the Conoco gas plant, they still served a very important purpose, taking heavy losses that the Russian military couldn't.

[00:16:03]You can't count what you can't see and you can't count what you don't know.

[00:16:09]One of my duties was to actually fly on board of transport aircrafts.

[00:16:14]Russian military aircrafts were filled with bodies killed in action operators from Wagner Group.

[00:16:21]What I witnessed being at mission at Syria as an Air Force officer was this Wagner Group used all the resources of Russian official military.

[00:16:32]They used their military aviation, they used their logistic capabilities, they used their military bases.

[00:16:40]By 2019, the Syrian government awarded several Wagner companies oil and gas drilling rights to about 10,000 square miles of land across the country.

[00:16:50]As recently as 2021, a Wagner company was awarded oil and gas drilling rights for 2000 square miles of offshore territory.

[00:16:59]Some would point to Syria as a pretty successful model of how business could be done.

[00:17:05]They went in surreptitiously, they managed to grab back a lot of the important oil, gas, and mineral resources for the Syrian state and for Russia, and they did that at minimal cost.

[00:17:19]Russia's found itself a very successful model and it wanted to replicate it.

[00:17:25]And the group did just that as it expanded to Africa.

[00:17:31]I'd say the biggest success for the Wagner Group that we know of now is in the Central African Republic.

[00:17:53]In Africa, Wagner set up even more shell companies to mine natural resources and sell them around the world.

[00:18:01]Wagner was able to do that through offering security services.

[00:18:08]Wagner targets countries with ongoing security issues.

[00:18:11]Some are former French colonies with governments weakened in the wake of reduced French military presence.

[00:18:20]In the Central African Republic, Wagner uses a company called Sewa Security Services to provide security to the president and other high level officials.

[00:18:30]Sewa is a subsidiary of Lobaye Invest, which has at least three mining licenses in the country.

[00:19:02]The first Wagner troops arrived in the Central African Republic in January of 2018 where they quickly got to work carrying out training tasks and setting up bases where they could help to instruct local armed forces.

[00:19:40]Wagner quickly got to work taking over mines.

[00:19:43]One of the largest is a roughly 138 square mile swath of land known as the Ndassima mine.

[00:19:50]It was a small scale mine where everything was done by hand.

[00:19:54]Wagner developed it into the only industrialized gold mine in the country.

[00:20:00]I'm a lawyer for Axmin, a company based in Central African Republic.

[00:20:04]We've been listed in Toronto Exchange.

[00:20:06]Axmin was granted the Ndassima mining license back in 2010.

[00:20:13]Unfortunately, in 2013, a civil war broke out so obviously as a company, we weren't able to go into exploration.

[00:20:25]Rebel groups like the Union for Peace, known as UPC, took control of the Ndassima mine for the next several years, until Wagner forces took over around 2017.

[00:21:08]In 2019, we received a document from the government saying that our permit was canceled.

[00:21:15]Two months later, we received information that in fact, Midas, which in fact was run by Wagner, it was awarded our license in Ndassima.

[00:21:27]Midas Resources is a Wagner company created for mining in the Central African Republic.

[00:21:34]The Journal was unable to find any prior mining history for Midas.

[00:21:40]In a 2011 report, Axmin projected Ndassima could produce more than 1.4 million ounces of gold over about eight years.

[00:21:50]That's nearly $3 billion worth at today's prices.

[00:21:54]Today, the government has no way of knowing what's going on in the field because it has become off limit for the government since Wagner took over.

[00:22:05]Satellite imagery analyzed by The Wall Street Journal further confirms Wagner's presence at the mine.

[00:22:11]This December 2022 image shows a Mi-8 or Mi-17 helicopter, the same kind of choppers Wagner uses elsewhere in Africa.

[00:22:21]Here, a type of armored vehicle military analysts call a Wagner wagon is identifiable by its roof mounted extra tire and its pointed front end.

[00:22:31]These customized combat trucks were also used by Wagner forces in Syria and Libya.

[00:22:38]Satellite images show the expansion and industrialization of the mine.

[00:22:43]On the right, we can see heavy machinery.

[00:22:46]We're able to actually see some dump trucks and diggers in the imagery that have been expanding these open pit mines.

[00:22:55]On the left, we can see the expansion of facilities and two processing lines.

[00:23:02]Together, these developments show the country's first industrialized gold mine built by Wagner.

[00:23:09]We are not naive about the situation.

[00:23:12]It's highly unlikely that we will get it back.

[00:23:16]As Wagner-linked companies took control of mines, its fighters killed anyone in their path.

[00:23:22]One such incident occurred in 2021 in the village of Boyo, about 100 miles south of the Ndassima mine.

[00:23:38]The Muslim community there was targeted because Wagner forces and their allies believed them to be helping the UPC rebels, who previously controlled the mine.

[00:24:09]The Boyo massacre was documented in a 2022 report to the UN Human Rights Council, which detailed the brutal assault on civilians there.

[00:24:21]The Boyo Massacre is one small example of atrocities Wagner has committed across the continent.

[00:24:28]At the same time, Wagner-backed companies continue to spring up across Africa in different sectors of the economy, particularly in the Central African Republic.

[00:24:53]An overall playbook is step one, enter into a military technical agreement with Country X, Central African Republic, Mali.

[00:25:01]You get the helicopters, you get the guys who fly the helicopters.

[00:25:04]You get the jet fighters, you get the guys who fly those jet fighters.

[00:25:08]You get the infantry fighting vehicles, you get the guys who drive them.

[00:25:11]That's the playbook, but then there's a second layer.

[00:25:14]We see this narrative of Russia coming in as a friend and a helper repeated in various types of propaganda and disinformation, ranging from Soviet art style billboards in cities in the Central African Republic, and even getting down to the level of creating children's cartoons.

[00:25:42]We will make sure that the story that you're trying to sell to your electorate is the one that's sold on social media.

[00:25:53]Officials, some people are just saddened by what's happening in the country.

[00:26:00]Things are getting worse and worse.

[00:26:02]The country has become a sort of rogue state with the Wagner calling all the the shots on behalf of the government.

[00:26:40]U.S. and European security officials told The Journal that Wagner is also trying to expand to Burkina Faso, Chad, and Ivory Coast.

[00:26:49]Every weapon that goes into Africa is money.

[00:26:54]Every bit of gold that comes out of Africa is money.

[00:26:58]That money services a lot of different needs.

[00:27:01]It has been all along a sanctions management strategy insulating Russia from what would inevitably come if it ever crossed the line into Ukraine.

[00:27:14]After backing Wagner through its massive expansion in Africa, Russia called the group back for the urgent need of the state, a full-scale war on Ukraine.

[00:27:24]Wagner would soon outshine the Russian military on the battlefield.

[00:27:28]It's expected that the money that Wagner, Prigozhin, and their front companies are reaping throughout Africa, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, much of that is expected to go back to Russia, some into Prigozhin's pockets, but much of it for the war effort in Ukraine.

[00:27:51]The initial invasion on February the 24th was carried out by the Russian military.

[00:27:56]They fired missiles, they sent in war planes, and then they sent in armored columns.

[00:28:02]And they very much thought that this was a war that would last for a few days.

[00:28:21]We know that there was money flowing outward from the Kremlin to Prigozhin and his companies.

[00:28:27]We know that some of that money was funneled in to Wagner.

[00:28:31]The Wall Street Journal reviewed contracts between the Russian government and 25 companies tied to Prigozhin, likely only a small portion of the total.

[00:28:41]Collectively, these companies won more than $5 billion in contracts between 2014 and 2023 with a notable spike in the amount in the year after the war began.

[00:28:53]So a significant amount of money for guns, for tanks, for other weaponry that can be used, that all needs to be funded somehow.

[00:29:04]As Moscow's plan to take Kyiv failed, Russian troops and Wagner fighters were stuck in towns on the outskirts of the city.

[00:29:12]One example that we have of how the Wagner Group was active around Kyiv was from the village of Motyzhyn.

[00:29:18]According to prosecutors and according to the Ukrainian soldiers, Wagner Group was brought in as an interrogation and torture team.

[00:30:10]As the Litvynenkos ran from the indiscriminate fire, their daughter was shot.

[00:30:15]Mykola pleaded with the Russians to save her.

[00:30:19]They were taken to a Russian base at a nearby farmhouse.

[00:31:34]As the conflict evolved, Russia's needs for Wagner also evolved.

[00:31:38]Russia put a lot more focus on its operations in the east of Ukraine.

[00:31:43]Wagner Group became a critical part of this.

[00:32:14]Here you see them really serving the purpose of doing a couple of different things.

[00:32:19]One, that frontline piece but also they've obviously been very important for force mobilization.

[00:32:34]Wagner began recruiting from prisons to make up for large Russian losses on the battlefield and to avoid drafting more civilians into the war.

[00:32:58]This method was used in World War II by Stalin.

[00:33:01]Going into the prisons, pulling people out, putting them on the front line, turning them into cannon fodder.

[00:33:08]The move to recruit from prisons signified a new phase for Wagner, one in which the group stepped firmly out of the shadows.

[00:33:17]It represents the clearest evidence yet of just how connected Wagner's operations are to the Kremlin.

[00:33:23]The Wall Street Journal interviewed convicts recruited by Wagner and later captured by Ukrainian forces who describe being transported from their prisons to the front lines in Ukraine with state resources.

[00:33:42]Social media videos gathered and verified by The Journal show dozens of trucks with federal prison markings arriving at commercial airports and military airfields across the country.

[00:33:54]At the airport in Penza, Russia, these trucks can be seen driving onto the tarmac.

[00:34:00]Men who appear to be prisoners unload from the trucks near several airplanes, at least one of which is registered to the Russian Air Force.

[00:34:55]The fact that Prigozhin can recruit in prisons demonstrates the level of power that he achieved.

[00:35:02]I think you can likely expect to see an expansion for Wagner of its contracts and ties within Russia so long as it's perceived to be successful.

[00:35:21]By May of 2023, the man who started out 10 years ago as Putin's chef was openly attacking Russia's Ministry of Defense and its top commander in Ukraine, acts that would send most to prison.

[00:36:11]We should expect the Wagner Group to continually change according to Russia's fortunes when it comes to arms, guns, gas, oil, and gold.

[00:36:23]I think it's likely that in the future you won't have any contracts with the Wagner Group publicly in any jurisdiction outside of Russia or its close allies.

[00:36:37]We may see a new name.

[00:36:40]Could be anything, could be Tchaikovsky Group.

[00:36:41]We don't know.

[00:36:42]At this point in time, Wagner activity is confirmed on at least four continents.

[00:36:48]It's not only about Africa, it's also about Latin America.

[00:36:56]It's not just that Russia is spreading its influence in these countries, but Russia is further destabilizing some of the areas where global security is at its weakest.

[00:37:08]Democracy's at stake in many of these countries.

[00:37:14]But what's at stake is even something more fundamental for the people of those jurisdictions, it's their very lives.