This article was originally published on 23 November 2022. It is being repromoted in light of recent questions being asked about Russian oligarch and founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Here Ido Vock looks at Wagner’s transition from a gang of mercenaries to a gang affiliated with the Russian army that has its own political wing.
BERLIN – In September a 55-year-old Russian named Yevgeny Nuzhin appeared in a video published online by Yuri Butusov, a Ukrainian blogger. A haggard-looking Nuzhin, sitting on a mattress in a basement in Ukrainian captivity, explained that he had been recruited from a prison to join the Wagner Group, a notorious Russian private military company (PMC).
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