How the U.S. Has Struggled to Stop the Growth of a Shadowy Russian Private Army

U.S. officials said they have felt underequipped in trying to curtail the mercenaries’ incursions, in part because American diplomacy in Africa has been gradually stripped of resources over the past three decades. Some also said the U.S. was slow to appreciate the severity of the Wagner threat before it became a formidable weapon in the Kremlin’s arsenal.

In Africa, American efforts to persuade governments not to work with Wagner have generally been late and ineffectual, the officials said. U.S. diplomats have been surprised when Wagner arrives in a faltering country, leaving them scrambling to counter the group’s influence with limited tools and incentives.

During the Cold War, America’s policy of containing the spread of Soviet communism led to a substantial investment in courting African leaders, offering developmental aid, university exchange programs, even concerts. But when the Berlin Wall fell, so too did the U.S. government’s interest in the African continent, the officials told ProPublica. Embassy staffs shrank; programs shriveled.

“America’s soft power is unbeatable, but it needs to be deployed,” Nagy told ProPublica. “The quiver is empty.”

Nagy and other current and former high-level State Department officials said embassies in Africa tend to employ few public diplomacy officers, with barebones staff that must juggle everything from routine visa issues to terrorist threats.

“That doesn’t leave a lot of time for a thin staff to develop the expertise or the relationships necessary to have or pursue a robust engagement strategy,” one senior State Department official said about efforts to steer foreign officials away from Wagner. “The ability of a fairly junior diplomatic officer to build a relationship with the Cabinet member who’s going to be making the decision — that is just not realistic in most cases.”

The State Department declined to comment. The Pentagon and the Kremlin did not respond to questions for this story.

The most visible U.S. effort to keep Wagner out of a specific country transpired in Mali, where the mercenaries arrived last December to fight jihadists rampaging in the north. Malian President Assimi Goïta had recently come to power in the latest of a series of coups that prompted international sanctions.

Before Wagner landed, Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of the U.S. military’s Africa Command, traveled to Mali to meet with Goïta. “I explained that I thought it was a bad idea to invite Wagner,” Townsend told Congress in March. “Wagner obeys no rules. They won’t follow the direction of the government.”

But the entreaties from Townsend and other U.S. officials were unsuccessful. Former diplomats say the effort was part of a troubling pattern where American officials parachute into complex situations equipped with little more than talking points. Africa Command declined to comment.

The Americans were telling the Malians not to work with the Wagner group but offering no meaningful alternatives, said J. Peter Pham, who served as the first-ever U.S. special envoy to the Sahel region until last year and maintains close contact with Malian and other African officials.

“You either have concrete programs of assistance, or you have personal relationships and diplomatic capital built up over the years that you can call upon,” Pham said. “Many American officials, often of middling rank, are often dispatched with neither.”

In March, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that Wagner mercenaries had participated in the torture of civilians, including by electrocution, while working with Malian soldiers. Last month, Human Rights Watch issued a detailed report accusing Russian fighters of participating in a massacre of roughly 300 civilians during a military operation. The killing began at a crowded cattle market on March 27 and continued for several days. In a statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “We are concerned that many reports suggest that the perpetrators were unaccountable forces from the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group.”

The Malian government has said that the Russians are helping their military as formal instructors, and that their army killed 203 “terrorists” and arrested 51 more during the operation. The Malian Embassy in the U.S. did not respond to requests for comment.

The Wagner group first attracted public notice in 2014, during the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. Its mercenaries fought alongside Russian federation forces, attacking Ukrainian forces in the still-contested Donbas region.

Gary Motsek, then a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, was alarmed by the emergence of what seemed to be a new breed of Russian mercenary.

For years, the Pentagon had been aware of Russian military contractors disregarding international law, Motsek said in an interview with ProPublica. But the contractors had mostly been consigned to securing oil tankers and other Russian assets. Now the Wagner Group was in combat, like a private army.

“Looking at the growth of the Wagner Group, it was clearly a missed opportunity” from roughly 2008 to 2010, Motsek said. “We should have made it a priority.”

At the time, Motsek led a Pentagon office that helped create international standards for private military contractors. He said the office focused on voluntary compliance and companies active in American warzones. When the Russians chose not to sign on to the standards, he was not aware of any effort to rein them in.

“It was probably my fault, more than anyone else, because I was the only one working on this on an almost daily basis,” Motsek told ProPublica. “We never went and said, ‘Let’s control these guys.’ I didn’t have the mandate to do that. And I guess I didn’t have the vision.”

American officials say Wagner operates through a web of shell companies controlled by the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food industry magnate with close ties to Putin, sardonically referred to as “Putin’s Chef.” Prigozhin has vehemently denied his involvement in the group, supposedly named after the German composer — a favorite of one of the mercenaries’ alleged commanders. Efforts to reach Prigozhin were not successful.

The Kremlin officially denies any connection with the activities of Russian mercenaries abroad, and much about Wagner’s structure and leadership remains unclear. But experts say that Wagner’s top officers have participated in meetings between foreign leaders and top Russian officials. They also say the Russian air force has transported Wagner fighters to launch the group’s international missions.

Wagner has spread around the world, particularly in Africa, because it presents an enticing package to leaders of embattled nations, experts said. It offers to quash terrorism and rebel threats with brutal military crackdowns, while rallying public support for their government clients through disinformation campaigns.

U.S. officials said they have felt underequipped in trying to curtail the mercenaries’ incursions, in part because American diplomacy in Africa has been gradually stripped of resources over the past three decades. Some also said the U.S. was slow to appreciate the severity of the Wagner threat before it became a formidable weapon in the Kremlin’s arsenal.

In Africa, American efforts to persuade governments not to work with Wagner have generally been late and ineffectual, the officials said. U.S. diplomats have been surprised when Wagner arrives in a faltering country, leaving them scrambling to counter the group’s influence with limited tools and incentives.

During the Cold War, America’s policy of containing the spread of Soviet communism led to a substantial investment in courting African leaders, offering developmental aid, university exchange programs, even concerts. But when the Berlin Wall fell, so too did the U.S. government’s interest in the African continent, the officials told ProPublica. Embassy staffs shrank; programs shriveled.

“America’s soft power is unbeatable, but it needs to be deployed,” Nagy told ProPublica. “The quiver is empty.”

Nagy and other current and former high-level State Department officials said embassies in Africa tend to employ few public diplomacy officers, with barebones staff that must juggle everything from routine visa issues to terrorist threats.

“That doesn’t leave a lot of time for a thin staff to develop the expertise or the relationships necessary to have or pursue a robust engagement strategy,” one senior State Department official said about efforts to steer foreign officials away from Wagner. “The ability of a fairly junior diplomatic officer to build a relationship with the Cabinet member who’s going to be making the decision — that is just not realistic in most cases.”

The State Department declined to comment. The Pentagon and the Kremlin did not respond to questions for this story.

The most visible U.S. effort to keep Wagner out of a specific country transpired in Mali, where the mercenaries arrived last December to fight jihadists rampaging in the north. Malian President Assimi Goïta had recently come to power in the latest of a series of coups that prompted international sanctions.

Before Wagner landed, Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of the U.S. military’s Africa Command, traveled to Mali to meet with Goïta. “I explained that I thought it was a bad idea to invite Wagner,” Townsend told Congress in March. “Wagner obeys no rules. They won’t follow the direction of the government.”

But the entreaties from Townsend and other U.S. officials were unsuccessful. Former diplomats say the effort was part of a troubling pattern where American officials parachute into complex situations equipped with little more than talking points. Africa Command declined to comment.

The Americans were telling the Malians not to work with the Wagner group but offering no meaningful alternatives, said J. Peter Pham, who served as the first-ever U.S. special envoy to the Sahel region until last year and maintains close contact with Malian and other African officials.

“You either have concrete programs of assistance, or you have personal relationships and diplomatic capital built up over the years that you can call upon,” Pham said. “Many American officials, often of middling rank, are often dispatched with neither.”

In March, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that Wagner mercenaries had participated in the torture of civilians, including by electrocution, while working with Malian soldiers. Last month, Human Rights Watch issued a detailed report accusing Russian fighters of participating in a massacre of roughly 300 civilians during a military operation. The killing began at a crowded cattle market on March 27 and continued for several days. In a statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “We are concerned that many reports suggest that the perpetrators were unaccountable forces from the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group.”

The Malian government has said that the Russians are helping their military as formal instructors, and that their army killed 203 “terrorists” and arrested 51 more during the operation. The Malian Embassy in the U.S. did not respond to requests for comment.

The Wagner group first attracted public notice in 2014, during the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. Its mercenaries fought alongside Russian federation forces, attacking Ukrainian forces in the still-contested Donbas region.

Gary Motsek, then a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, was alarmed by the emergence of what seemed to be a new breed of Russian mercenary.

For years, the Pentagon had been aware of Russian military contractors disregarding international law, Motsek said in an interview with ProPublica. But the contractors had mostly been consigned to securing oil tankers and other Russian assets. Now the Wagner Group was in combat, like a private army.

“Looking at the growth of the Wagner Group, it was clearly a missed opportunity” from roughly 2008 to 2010, Motsek said. “We should have made it a priority.”

At the time, Motsek led a Pentagon office that helped create international standards for private military contractors. He said the office focused on voluntary compliance and companies active in American warzones. When the Russians chose not to sign on to the standards, he was not aware of any effort to rein them in.

“It was probably my fault, more than anyone else, because I was the only one working on this on an almost daily basis,” Motsek told ProPublica. “We never went and said, ‘Let’s control these guys.’ I didn’t have the mandate to do that. And I guess I didn’t have the vision.”

American officials say Wagner operates through a web of shell companies controlled by the Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food industry magnate with close ties to Putin, sardonically referred to as “Putin’s Chef.” Prigozhin has vehemently denied his involvement in the group, supposedly named after the German composer — a favorite of one of the mercenaries’ alleged commanders. Efforts to reach Prigozhin were not successful.

Joaquin Sapien and Joshua Kaplan are ProPublica reporters. This story was originally published by ProPublica.