Russia’s Private Army: Wagner’s Rise and Reckoning
A Review of Death is Our Business by John Lechner
In the summer of 2023, after engaging in a brutal battle of attrition against Ukrainian forces over the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where thousands of drugged up Russian convicts employed by the private military company the Wagner Group had been thrown at Ukranian defenses, taking the city inch by tiny inch, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin announced via Telegram that he was starting a “March for Justice.”
Enraged by what he saw as the Russian Ministry of Defense’s corruption and incompetence over the course of the Ukraine War, especially over the Battle of Bakhmut, Prigozhin decided that he would use force to bring change to the Russian high command. This “march” became known as the Wagner Group Mutiny and would involve up to 7 Russian military aircraft being shot down and possibly as many as 30 Russian servicemen killed by Wagner forces.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal that put an end to the rebellion before Prigozhin’s forces reached Moscow, but this mutiny would be the last major action that Yevgeny Prigozhin would undertake, as just two months later, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group’s cofounder, Dmitry Utkin, would be killed in a somewhat mysterious aircraft explosion, that many believe was an assassination by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thereby putting an end to the saga of the infamous Wagner Group.
Death is Our Business by John Lechner gives a history of the Wagner Group from its origins in the pressure cooker environment of Russian ultranationalists after the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula following the 2014 Maidan Revolution to the dramatic and mysterious deaths of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin.
The book follows Wagner through five general phases: Events in the lives of Prigozhin and Utkin before they created Wagner, and the Wagner Group’s early actions in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015; the group’s first forays into foreign mercenary work in Syria; Wagner’s progressively expanding actions in Africa; “The Company’s” high profile actions in Ukraine following the 2022 full scale invasion; and finally the 2023 Wagner Mutiny.
Many mainstream media articles gloss over the Wagner Group’s origin only with reference to Prigozhin as “Putin’s Chef,” due to his history of catering contracts with the Russian state, and quickly skip over the years 2014-2021 before addressing high-profile Wagner actions in Ukraine. However, Lechner’s book provides a deep history of the origins of the Wagner Group in 2014 after various Russian ultranationalist groups engaged in a form of rule from below, forcing the Russian state’s hand into acting more aggressively in eastern Ukraine.
Lechner’s history of Wagner’s activity in Syria is in-depth and provides the reader with a solid understanding of how the group operated there. He also covers the well-known Battle of Khasham, where approximately 40 American servicemen–outnumbered more than 10 to 1–fought off Russian and Syrian fighters working for Wagner using airpower, killing up to 200 Wagner fighters.
Your author found the detailed discussion of Wagner’s activities in Africa to be the most interesting. Africa, with a long history of mercenary activity throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, became a chessboard for Russia to compete with the West. Many mainstream media tellings of the Wagner Group story gloss over their extensive African activities to the detriment of their readers. Lechner makes no such error.
However, if readers are more interested in learning more on how the gruesome meat grinder penal units came about or in details of the adrenaline-packed uncertainty of the Wagner mutiny, Lechner does not disappoint, covering these subjects well.
The book provides good insight into how the personalities of Prigozhin and Utkin came together to create one of the most high-profile private military corporations in the 21st century. In particular, Lechner provides an astute analysis of how the group operated and its overall role inside–or outside–of Russian foreign policy. Early in the book, Lecher states, “What the West came to see as well-established doctrine for ‘hybrid warfare’ was more to borrow from Charles Tilly, a by-product of efforts to carry out more immediate tasks.” Here, I believe Lechner has hit the nail on the head in terms of how the Wagner Group was created, operated, and ultimately died. By taking advantage of opportunities as they came, developing by iterating, and being willing to play fast and loose, the Wagner Group exploded in size and reputation over its relatively short lifespan.
Lechner’s status as a Western journalist gives his book the perspective of an outsider looking in, but his ability to speak multiple relevant languages, including Russian and French, as well as Sango, the lingua franca of the Central African Republic, ensured that the book is well researched with numerous interviews from those with real world experience in, or at the hands of, the Wagner Group.
Engaging and easy to read, the book does not get bogged down in academic language and keeps the reader going throughout. It is a great book for both hardcore followers of international conflicts, as well as for the layman interested in military history and current events. If you have an interest in mercenaries, the War in Ukraine, or have previously enjoyed books such as 85 Days in Slavyansk, then this is definitely a book that you should pick up.
You can order Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare here: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Our-Business-Russian-Mercenaries/dp/1639733361
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