The Wagner Group

Starred review from August 19, 2024
Journalist Margolin debuts with a riveting history of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military corporation, and its founder Evgeniy Prigozhin, who was likely assassinated by Russian security services after leading a failed coup attempt in 2022. Margolin traces Wagner from its shadowy origins as a paramilitary unit deployed in Ukraine in 2014 through its metastasis into something bigger and less easily definable. More than just another example of the ongoing “mercenary renaissance,” wherein wealthy countries back private armies to avoid culpability, Wagner was also “a cultural phenomenon”—a clandestine global criminal network with hundreds of shell companies that developed an online youth fan base which reveled in its “edginess.” Tracking Wagner’s involvement in African and Middle Eastern countries where, in addition to fighting, it became involved in mining, lumbering, and the import of alcohol, Margolin paints a surreal picture of the group’s self-mythologizing, which had a half-corporate, half-mafioso flair (the group produced a series of eight interlocking films that Margolin calls “the Wagner Cinematic Universe,” featuring fictionalized versions of real soldiers; but despite this and other extensive merchandising, the group maintained a strict code of silence). Margolin builds to a fascinating portrait of a modern Russian political sphere governed by symbolism and performance (Prigozhin’s dramatic killing in a private jet explosion was meant as a response to his “theatrical statements”) and a global order in which violence easily permeates civil society by posing as mere business. It’s a vital window onto the weird world of secretive, privatized modern warfare.