On August 1st, 2022, the small mining town of Soledar in Ukraine had apartments, buildings, and houses. Fast forward to January 10th, 2023 and it had turned to rubble. That same afternoon, a statement on the app Telegram surfaced claiming Wagner “took control of this entire territory of Soledar.” Even though the Russian army had been fighting across Ukraine for months, this message didn’t come from them. It came from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He started out as a Kremlin caterer, where he got the nickname “Putin chef,” but in 2014, he became the head of the Wagner Group, a covert Russian network with mining companies, political influence operations, and a brutal private military force. Until recently, the Wagner Group was a secret operation, and claiming a public victory like this was rare.

But things are starting to change, and the playbook of this dangerous group is becoming much clearer. In 2014, Russian forces annexed Crimea and began fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. A year later, soldiers in unmarked green uniforms showed up on the ground to support Russian troops. They were called “Little Green Men,” but we now know this was likely the first time Wagner soldiers were deployed on the ground. These soldiers have become Prighozin’s frontline agents for Russia’s global strategy. They serve multiple purposes for the Russian government, but chief among them is to divert attention from activities that the Russian government and the Kremlin in particular don’t want the world to pay attention to.

The Wagner Group targets countries experiencing long conflicts or that are weakly governed or corrupt. Take Syria, which has been under authoritarian rule for more than 50 years and in 2011 saw a civil war break out between the Syrian government and anti-government rebel groups. To fight the rebels, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad turned to his Russian ally for help. Shortly after, Wagner mercenaries appeared in Syria to support the government forces. Since then, all these countries have seen Wagner troops on the ground, most of them while going through periods of instability. This has allowed the Wagner Group — and by extension — Russia to expand its reach to at least 4 different continents, particularly in Africa, where at least 18 different countries have seen Wagner forces on the ground in the past decade.

In these client states where Wagner is operating, a lot of the work is teaching local militaries how to do reconnaissance and counterinsurgency, but often in a very rough way. The Wagner Group generally does this by spearheading brutal military incursions. Like in Mali, another prime target for Wagner. Since 2012, Mali has been fighting a jihadist insurgency and has experienced 3 coups in just 9 years. For nearly a decade, Mali had military support from France — its former colonizer. However, in 2021, when France started to withdraw its army, it is widely believed Mali contracted Wagner troops to help them fight against the rebels and secure power. Mali denies the deployment of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, but satellite imagery analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggest they arrived quietly in December of 2021 and built a military base and access roads by the airport to facilitate their deployment.

The main purpose of the Wagner Group is to make sure that the activities that the people do are not seen and cannot be traced and tracked. However, in April of 2022, a mass grave in the Malian desert was traced back to the Wagner Group. They’ve also been linked to other violent incidents in Mali, including the killing of about 350 men in March of 2022. A UN report shows that, since Wagner’s arrival in Mali, the number of civilian deaths has increased by 324%, and thousands more have been displaced.

The Wagner Group has a lot to gain from providing weapons and training to client states of Russia. Typically, the Wagner Group, through a series of shell companies, will get payment in the form of oil, gold, or uranium. This is exactly what happened in Sudan. A country that’s been under autocratic rule for 3 decades went through a series of coups and is now ruled by Sudan’s military. Sudan’s relationship with the Wagner Group began in 2017, when Sudan’s then president Omar al-Bashir met with Putin to establish a new alliance with Russia. In exchange for providing weapons and training, the Wagner Group operates gold plants where they exploit Sudan’s natural resources. This has made Prigozhin a billionaire, and the group is now also a legal entity with headquarters in St.Petersburg. Putin has often denied links to Wagner group activity, but in recent months, Prigozhin has started speaking publicly about his role, which has drawn new sanctions and increased scrutiny from around the world.