Symphony in the Shadows: The Wagner Group and the Russian State

The dissertation examines the Russian Wagner Group's dual role as a state-affiliated and at times autonomous actor, and its complex relationship with the Russian state. The Russian Wagner Group has been a key player in advancing Russia’s interests on the African continent, as well as in its full-scale war against Ukraine launched in February 2022 and earlier military operations there. Despite its significance, the group has operated predominantly in the shadows since its founding presumably in 2014. Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the businessman leading the Wagner Group, orchestrated a complex web of activities that served both the Group’s and the Russian state’s interests.

In existing literature, the Wagner Group’s actorness is often downplayed or ignored in favour of analysing and investigating the Group’s relationship with the Russian state. This dissertation is guided by an analytical perspective of the Wagner Group as an actor and through five dissertation papers, provides valuable insights on how the Group is constituted and legitimised as an actor, and its relations with the Russian state.

The dissertation employs a research strategy of composing a collage of cases i.e. analysing the Group through various theoretical lenses. This allows for the complex dynamics of the Group’s performances, representations and practices to be part of the analysis. Furthermore, the dissertation draws on, and critically engages with contested narratives and multiple commonsensical logics about the Group.

The dissertation’s five papers offer five perspectives on the Wagner Group and its relationship with the Russian state. Paper A investigates the Wagner Group’s relationship with the Russian state by showing similarities between neo-liberal trends of outsourcing security via an economic market and Russia’s informal neo-patrimonial regime. Paper B shows a development in Russian discourses, which constitutes the Russian private military companies as legitimate actors by the end of 2021. Paper C analyses the Wagner Group in Africa as an infrastructure, and finds that the Group facilitates military, economic and diplomatic flows and that its significance cannot be grasped in its full, by focusing only on one of these flows. The multiplicity of the Wagner Group is also a key aspect of Paper D, which, by focusing on the Wagner Group in Sudan, conceptualises the Group as both a foreign policy instrument, actor and infrastructure, working on a spectrum between state-controlled and autonomous actor. This Paper also posits that the Group’s significance lies in the multiple different roles it has been able to fill, both on behalf of the Russian state, and in its own interest. And last Paper E, critically assesses liberal actors’ representations of the Wagner Group and Russia, by analysing the representations alongside practice in Mali and the Central African Republic.

As a whole, this multi-dimensional approach critically rearticulates the Wagner Group as an actor and provides fresh insights into the Wagner Group's actorness, its relationship with the Russian state and its contributions to Russian geopolitical strategy.

The study advances understanding of the Wagner Group by combining empirical insights, theoretical frameworks, and methodological innovations. It challenges dominant assumptions about the Wagner Group, reveals insights into its relationship with the Russian state, and critiques simplified narratives of state-security dynamics. Through this, the dissertation enhances scholarly discussions on non-state and semi-state actors and their implications for global security and governance.