What was Wagner named after? From a private military company, serving Vladimir Putin? Of a band of thugs and raiders, a squad of lawless mercenaries, ready to break every red line set by the laws of war? From a company of disinformation and influence, driven by aesthetics and mythology, in the service of the “tsar” and the “greatness of Russia”? Of an uncontrollable gang whose ambition and violence ended up overshadowing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Putin himself?
A bit of all this and much more. The x-ray of the Wagner group proposed by the authors, members of the “All Eyes on Wagner” collective, is a precise and well-documented investigation, which explores the underbelly of the empire built by Evgueni Prigojine, the former convict who became an entrepreneur in the orbit of the Kremlin and finally eliminated.
Creature of the oligarch, the Wagner monster has fed on the conflicts created or maintained by Moscow for 15 years: from the start of the invasion of Donbass, we found him in Ukraine, then in Syria and in several African countries: Central African Republic , Mali, Sudan… The abuses of his men are documented, filmed, listed. Mercenaries are deployed on all fronts. They are also observed there, scrutinized by web detectives, journalists, “open source” investigation geeks who, behind their computer screen, scan and analyze the available data: flight plans, satellite photos, flowcharts and social media image captures.
This is the originality of this investigation without fieldwork. She methodically deciphers the Prigojine galaxy, the front companies, the fake media, the troll farms, the influence tools that prepare opinions, the security boxes and the mining companies that come to take advantage of the geopolitical fault lines in which they operate. are engulfed. A method that could well survive Prigozhin.