How Russian Warmongers Have Profited from Killing

“…Inside story of how the Wagner Group made private military companies inextricable from Russia’s anti-Western foreign strategy. In 2014, a well-trained, mysterious band of mercenaries arrived in Ukraine, part of Russia’s first attempt to claim the country as its own. Upon ceasefire, the ‘Wagner Group’ faded back into shadow, only to reemerge in the Middle East, where they’d go toe-to-toe with the U.S., and in Africa, where they’d earn praise for ‘tough measures’ against insurgencies yet spark outrage for looting, torture, and civilian deaths.” This story hits at the deeper problem of how during the Cold War, Russia and the US collaborated to start wars across the globe to profit from their military-industrial-complex. They have made this collaboration seem like a rivalry, so that they can blame each other as they offer to “help” different countries with fighting on one side, and then the other in this duality propagandizes them as the enemy and offers to “help” whoever is baited as the antagonist. The winners are the weapon-makers, military advisors (who make careers from this fiction-building creation of enemies where there was peace before), and various bribed-by-weapon-makers politicians.
“…As Russia gained a foothold of influence abroad, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as ‘Putin’s Chef,’ went from caterer to commander to single greatest threat Putin has faced in his over-twenty-year rule. Dually armed with military and strategic prowess, the Wagner Group created a new market in a vast geopolitical landscape increasingly receptive to the promises of private actors… John Lechner…” was “on the ground to witness Wagner partner with fragile nation states, score access to natural resources, oust peacekeeping missions, and cash in on conflicts reframed as Kremlin interests. After rebelling, Prigozhin faced an epic demise—but Wagner lives on, its political, business, and military ventures a pillar of Russian operations the world over.” This note mixes up the concept of state-sponsored versus private warfare. Then again, this is consistent with how America’s CIA has funded private weapons research, and then used it in public warfare. This blurry line between private and public is how warmongers profit from starting new wars: they must have state politicians go to war publicly, while this state can pay private businesses to fight or manufacture weapons for them in the private market. This means that the profiteers are at-fault, and not the specific state-players who they blame. A politician who accepts massive bribes for approving war contracts and the like is at fault. But not the Russian people, who have no democratic say. “Featuring exclusive interviews with over thirty Wagner Group members… true tale of the renegade militia that proved global instability is nothing if not an opportunity.”
The opening “Author’s Note” announces that some names “have been anonymized” to protect those who are quoted. Then, the “Introduction” focuses on a Ukrainian soldier who joined to find a job that helped Ukraine avoid losing ground, as when his own village was occupied. A year later, he had a “metal brace screwed to his leg.” After an injury, he finds himself among Wagner officers, who beat him up, trying to get positions out of “an ordinary soldier”. Then, they tattooed “I love PMC Wagner” on his chest. These Wagner guys differ in opinions of what they are fight for “each other”, “Kievan Rus” or other myths. Then, he waited for a prisoner exchange at a hospital. A claim is made that Wagner signals a unique return to private-warfare that was not around for the last 200 years. This is not the case. Corporations have been instigating and profiting from wars across these 200 years: they have just gotten better at covering their involvement in starting wars to avoid being charged with war-crimes. Wagner is just an example of a direct outing of this usually hidden marriage. According to this version of events, a turn happened in part when in 2014 Prigozhin privately invaded Crimea for Moscow.
This book is illustrated with maps of the conflict in Ukraine. It tends to jump too rapidly between ideas and times across history. The first chapter mentions that Bush might have recognized Prigozhin because he was the one who served him a “four courses” meal in 2002. Maybe it is necessary to jump around between Clinton, and Bush, and NATO to explain these complex conflicts. The prose throughout is kind of like Dostoevsky’s: there are sketches of characters, and events, with social and philosophical explanations. There are especially many portraits of Wagner mercenaries, since interviews with them is largely what this book covers. For example, Vitaly first served for the French Foreign Legion in Africa in 2017, then joined Wagner in 2018. Vitaly argues that Wagner was doing good when in 2021 they to defend a region because their help allowed for the building of “infrastructure” and for “development”. But what is a certain fact is that these “mercenaries” “held CAR’s customs agency” in exchange for $35 million annually in “subsidies on fuel and food” (124). Then, Wagner rolls into a gold mine and begins “building a ‘state of the art’ processing plant…” (125). Rivals could not get that plant-building contract because they could not out-shoot this mercenary group. This begins to explain the corrupt strategies of such agencies.
There is probably a lot revealed across this book that explains. How people corruptly make money from killing people in wars they help to fuel. I found many curious insights from this light review. Those who write about mercenaries as a journalist, or research this topic in academia would profit from reading this book cover-to-cover to learn from its details.
—Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Fall 2024: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-fall-2024

An interesting and well-written read. I don't know if it is truly long enough to be comprehensive. It is a very good primer.