Moscow’s Mercenaries: The Rise and Fall of the Wagner Group

The Wagner Group emerged from Russia’s shadowy criminal underworld in 2014 and soon became one of the world’s most infamous private military companies. Led by the provocative oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner developed into a key instrument of Russian power projection, with deep and direct ties to the Kremlin. Its mercenaries fought on the front lines in Ukraine, propped up regimes in the Middle East and Africa, and exploited chaos to secure lucrative resource contracts before Prigozhin’s mutiny against Moscow in 2023 brought him down.

This book traces the Wagner Group’s violent ascent and descent, exposing how a shadow army built an empire that seemed to have no end in sight until it turned on its masters. Drawing on a wide range of sources and interviews, Moscow’s Mercenaries offers a comprehensive examination of Wagner’s inner workings: its hybrid structure, battlefield tactics, propaganda campaigns, and connections to the Russian military. From Ukraine to brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, and beyond, the book shows how Wagner evolved into a global criminal syndicate and reveals why its ambitions led to a fatal collision with the Russian state.

Moscow’s Mercenaries explores what Wagner’s rise tells us about the future of modern warfare, the erosion of international norms, and how authoritarian regimes outsource violence. Anyone interested in the evolution of mercenary warfare, great power competition, and the dark underbelly of global security stands to learn important lessons from this well-timed and insightful book.

Christopher M. Faulkner is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program.

Raphael Parens is a fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia and Africa Programs and a senior fellow at the Delphi Global Research Center.

Colin P. Clarke is the executive director of the Soufan Center, an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism–The Hague, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.