On 23 August, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) reported that the Wagner Group is facing significant fragmentation one year after the deaths of key leaders, including its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry Utkin, who were killed in a plane crash in 2023.
Many former Wagner leaders and personnel left the group, transferring to the Russian MOD’s PMC, Kadyrov’s Akhmat unit, and other units, which has now shrunk from 50,000 in 2023 to around 5,000 in Belarus and Africa, as per the report.
The Ministry wrote:
- Today is the first anniversary of the death of several key Wagner Group leaders, including its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry ‘Wagner’ Utkin, who were killed in a plane crash almost certainly due to an explosion on board. Since then, the Wagner Group has become increasingly fragmented, with many surviving senior figures leaving the group.
- Andrei ‘Sedoi’ Troshev, Wagner’s former chief executive, joined the Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD), likely as part of the Russian MOD’s Redut Private Military Company (PMC), tasked with forming Volunteer Corps units to fight in Ukraine. Alexandr ‘Ratibor’ Kuznetsov, former commander of Wagner’s 1st Assault Detachment joined Chechen Special Forces (Spetsnaz) volunteer unit ‘Akhmat’. Boris ‘Zombi’ Nizhevenok, former commander of Wagner’s 3rd Assault Detachment, assumed leadership of the ‘Vostok-V’ volunteer unit in May 2024.
- Numerous veteran Wagner personnel have followed these and other former Wagner leaders in transferring from the group. In comparison to its peak personnel count of around 50,000 in 2023, Wagner now highly likely maintains around 5,000 total personnel across its residual deployments in Belarus and Africa.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian mercenary leader and oligarch, led the Wagner Group, a private military company under the umbrella of Russia’s MoD. He was a close ally of President Vladimir Putin until his rebellion in June 2023, when he captured Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow. The uprising ended abruptly the next day when Prigozhin agreed to relocate his forces to Belarus. Under economic sanctions and facing criminal charges in the US and UK, Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in Tver Oblast, north of Moscow, on 23 August 2023, two months after the rebellion.
Related:
- Dozens of Wagner mercenaries, their local allies killed by Tuareg fighters in Mali
- UK Intel: 1,000 Wagner mercenaries stay in Belarus, aid Russia vs Ukraine
- UK intel: Russia’s prison population drops by 150,000 amid war recruitment since 2022
- How Putin’s top ally killed Prigozhin: The inside story of Russia’s power struggle
- Ukrainian Defense Minister: Prigozhin’s death shows Putin cannot be trusted
- ISW: Assassination of Wagner Group Leadership effectively ends organization’s autonomy from Kremlin
- Prigozhin was on board plane that crashed near Moscow, Russian transport agency says – CNN (UPDATE)
