Recommendation 6

Over the past year and a half, the Russia-Ukraine war eroded the Wagner Network’s deniability and Prigozhin’s public arguments with the Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed the network’s long-suspected links to the Russian state. The brutality of its fighters in Ukraine is appalling but not atypical. So long as the network survives in some form, we believe that countries may still turn to it in future. Many leaders— mostly in insecure environments in Africa—are likely already to have known the price of engaging the network when they decided to work with it.