A year after the mutiny, Russia controls the remains of the group

Russia has effectively dismantled and replaced the Wagner Group in the year since the mercenaries shocked the world by launching a mutiny against President Vladimir Putin’s government, experts told the BBC.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late leader of the paramilitary force, crossed from Ukraine on June 23, 2023 and seized the southern city of Rostov after months of rising tensions with military leaders in Moscow.

His forces then began a brief charge toward the capital, encountering virtually no resistance. The “march for justice,” as Prigozhin called it, came to an abrupt end the day after he called off the advance.

Just two months later, Prigozhin’s plane crashed and He was assassinated along with several other high-ranking Wagner members.casting uncertainty over the group’s future.

Dr Sorcha MacLeod, a member of the UN working group on mercenaries and a professor at the University of Copenhagen, said ex-Wagner troops had fragmented across the Russian state.

“(Wagner) may not exist in exactly the form he previously existed, but a version – or even versions – of him continue to exist,” he told the BBC. “There has been this kind of dispersal among the Russian state, so there is no overall controller.”

“The Wagner Group was incredibly important geopolitically and economically for Russia, so it was never going to disappear as some people suggested,” he added.

For years, Prigozhin’s forces had been a valuable and undeniable tool for Russian operations in Africa and Syria. But it was in Ukraine – as Moscow’s conventional forces struggled to make a dent in Kiev’s defenses – that Prigozhin and Wagner came to light.

In late 2022 and early 2023, Wagner was key to Russia’s few battlefield victories. His forces – largely made up of former prisoners – managed to take the eastern city of Soledar, before it became entrenched after months of intense fighting in the meat grinder of Bakhmut.

At his peak, Wagner had around 50,000 mercenaries in Ukraine, according to the US National Security Council.

Now, experts say Wagner’s operations in Ukraine have been absorbed by other Russian state and paramilitary units. A former Wagner commander recently told the Russian BBC that the mercenaries had been ordered to “join the Ministry of Defense” or leave.

UK intelligence officials have suggested that some of the group’s infantry units have been absorbed into the Rosgvardia, or Home Guard. The unit, established in 2016, has been described as Putin’s “private army” and is controlled by his former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov.

The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) has said that elements of the Wagner Group began to come under the control of the National Guard in October 2023. Known as “voluntary formations”, the former Wagner troops were due to be deployed to Ukraine with six month contracts. and to Africa with nine-month contracts, he said.

Anton Yelizarov, a former Wagner operator who is said to have commanded the mercenaries’ bloody operations in Bakhmut, appeared to confirm the integration days later. In a video posted on a Telegram channel linked to Wagner, he said he was present at the construction of a camp where Wagner’s troops would “work for the good of Russia” and join National Guard units in a new training.

UK officials said that the “incorporation of former Wagner assault detachments into the Rosgvardia Volunteer Corps most likely indicated that Wagner had been successfully subordinated to Rosgvardia, increasing Russian state control over the Wagner Group.”

Other ex-Wagner forces have enlisted to fight with Vladimir Putin’s strongman in Chechnya – Ramzan Kadyrov – and his Akhmat forces, a recent BBC Russian investigation found.

A tangible example of the group’s decline came when its logo was reportedly removed from the tower it had occupied in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city.

In the days after the mutiny, Prigozhin was said to have struck a deal with Putin to focus his group’s operations in Africa, propping up regimes and securing resources for Russia. Following his death, Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov reportedly toured African capitals, assuring officials that the group’s services would not be dissipated.

Earlier this month, the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) think tank observed that after Prigozhin’s death “the Russian state’s attention to (Africa) not only did not weaken, but rather strengthened.”

In February, the BBC obtained documents revealing that Moscow was offering a “regime survival package” in exchange for access to strategically important natural resources, an approach previously favored by the Wagner Group.

The plan was being offered by a so-called Russian “expeditionary group” – dubbed the Africa Corps – and commanded by former GRU general Andrey Averyanov. He previously oversaw covert operations specializing in assassinations and destabilization of foreign governments.

Experts told the BBC that the Africa Corps has effectively replaced Wagner in West Africa. On Telegram, the unit boasted of offering its recruits salaries of up to 110,000 rubles a year and service “under the direction of competent commanders with extensive combat experience.”

In January, it announced its first deployment of 100 troops to Burkina Faso. Another 100 reportedly arrived in Niger in April.

Ruslan Trad, a security analyst at the Atlantic Council, told the BBC that, in effect, Wagner “became the Africa Corps and now serves all the purposes of military intelligence” and the Ministry of Defense.

“In Africa, these soldiers are doing much the same thing: protecting trade routes, securing resources that Moscow uses to evade sanctions, and more: serving local councils and directing the flow of migrants,” he observed.

The PISM noted that the Africa Corps is intended to be used “more openly” than Wagner on the continent with the intention of replacing Western, and particularly French, influence in Africa.

The Russian BBC reported that only in the Central African Republic (CAR) does Wagner continue to operate in some of its former form, supposedly controlled by Prigozhin’s son, Pavel.

“Moscow has given the heir the go-ahead to continue doing what his father did in Africa, on the condition that it does not contradict Russia’s interests,” a source who used to work with Yevgeny Prigozhin told the Russian BBC.

Last week, Le Monde reported that around 1,500 Wagner soldiers had assisted local security forces in attacks on rebel-held areas.

However, the PISM noted that the overall importance of the Central African Republic in Moscow’s strategic thinking “is declining.”

Dr MacLeod suggested that Wagner’s original aim in the Central African Republic had been to show “proof of concept” that mercenary groups can be “used as successful counter-terrorism actors”, a goal Moscow may now consider to have been achieved.

But he added that Wagner was “fully involved” within the Central African Republic, making it more difficult to replace him with the new Africa Corps under development.

Despite the threat posed by the Prigozhin mutiny, Sunday’s anniversary passed largely without incident in Russia.

Dan Storyev, of the OVD-Info monitoring group, told the BBC that Prigozhin’s legacy fell mainly on those aligned with the Kremlin.

“Generally speaking, the Wagner mutiny hasn’t had much or any real grassroots support for there to be, say, mass demonstrations to mark the anniversary, perhaps because it didn’t have a genuine anti-war message,” he said.

“There are people who organize protests in Russia, but they focus on anti-war activism and have nothing to do with (Prigozhin).”