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The Independent UK

National

Liam James

Who are the Wagner mercenaries and why are they so involved in Ukraine?

Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin Ukraine Vladimir Putin Kremlin Andrei Medvedev Moscow Sergei Markov CNN Russia

Getty/AP

Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine have been supported on the battlefield by tens of thousands of mercenaries from a shadowy group led by a businessman and longtime affiliate of president Vladimir Putin.

The Wagner Group is a private military company under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin that cut its teeth in deployments to Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014 and has since dispatched troops to several conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, including the Syrian Civil War.

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