The name is probably one of the major understatements in Russian military history: “Wagner Group” sounds so harmless and small and yet it is one of the most brutal and defining factors in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Wagner declared Bakhmut conquered, recruited thousands upon thousands of prisoners for the war, and their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is so chutzpah that he constantly criticizes and taunts the Russian army leadership without being prosecuted. How can that be?
In a two-part documentary for Arte and Forbidden Stories, Benoît Bringer dives deep into the history of the paramilitary force for almost two hours. The Wagner Group – Russia’s secret mercenaries begins in 2014, with the Maidan in Kiev. At that time, the Russian Ministry of Defense had the idea of setting up well-equipped units that were not connected to the army. Sometimes it’s as simple as that: where the state doesn’t act as such, it’s difficult to hold it accountable. The journalist Ilya Barabanov puts it this way: “Prigozhin is in no way directly connected to the state authorities. At the same time, he does all sorts of unofficial services for them. From war deals to mercenary operations, which the Defense Ministry denies.”
The main informant is the former Russian Wagner fighter Marat Gabidullin
The Ukraine war, which strictly speaking began in 2014, forms the time frame of this portrait of mercenaries, but the rise and power of the Wagner organization are primarily documented in two other fateful locations: Syria and the Central African Republic.
The main informant for the Syria section is the former Russian Wagner fighter Marat Gabidullin, who was involved in the capture of the city of Palmyra and the fight against the terrorist organization Islamic State. Unofficially, the Wagner group in Syria took over the function of ground troops, he says: “Officially, they weren’t even there.” Of course, Gabidullin fled abroad.
For the meticulous documentation of Wagner, the film team sought out numerous people to talk to, fugitive Russian investigative journalists, human rights activists from Russia and the United Nations, and relatives of alleged Wagner victims. The result is a very gloomy picture that didn’t even need the dramatic, dark accompanying music: it seems bad enough as it is.
The critical journalist Denis Korotkow was sent a severed ram’s head
For example, the film tells the story of a Syrian who refused to join the Assad army in 2017 and was allegedly tortured to death by Wagner people. Oppressive video snippets can be seen and a desperate, anonymous brother named “Abdallah”, who was not able to legally apprehend a heavily incriminated tormentor, although the Russian Novaya Gazeta-Journalist Denis Korotkov was able to identify him. This tormentor has since died for undisclosed reasons. A funeral wreath and a severed ram’s head were sent to Korotkow, who played a key role in the Arte documentary and who years ago had already written a large report on the Wagner troupe. An unmistakable threat towards the journalist. He, too, now lives outside of Russia. Because in the case of the Syrian the Russian judiciary obviously has no increased interest in clarification, an international human rights activist no longer wants to sue the Wagner Group, but the state – before the European Court of Human Rights.
The death of three Russian investigative journalists who approached the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic in the summer of 2018 and wanted to research their business interests is unlikely to be officially cleared up either. Accordingly, the mercenaries protected strategic facilities or helped in the civil war, in return they received shares in mineral resources. Independent UN expert Sorcha MacLeod says there is a pattern: “Whenever Wagner mercenaries are involved in armed conflict, there are human rights abuses and potential war crimes.”
But this is the weakness of the extensively researched Benoît Bringer work on the Wagner group: it shows how the organization of Prigozhin established itself as a power factor long denied by the state, but its strategic role on the Ukrainian battlefields is hardly illuminated. Is it a partner of the Russian army or is it also its competitor? How relevant is it on the battlefields? The war, which is currently changing the world, takes up hardly more than ten of the 112 film minutes. An assessment by Marat Gabidullin, the former combatant: “The Wagner people have combat experience. They are in Ukraine because the armed forces are not able to carry out the task.” The Russian system cannot do without them.
Wagner boss Prigoschin probably wanted to give that impression at the weekend. He spoke of chaos in the Russian-Ukrainian border area, attacked the army leadership and threatened to send troops himself.
The Wagner Group – Russia’s Secret Mercenaries, Arte, two-part documentary, 8:15 p.m.