Moscow's Mercenaries - (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare) by Christopher M Faulkner & Raphael Parens & Colin P Clarke (Paperback)

About the Book

This book traces the Wagner Group's violent ascent and descent, exposing how a shadow army built an empire until it turned on its masters.

Book Synopsis

The Wagner Group emerged from Russia's shadowy criminal underworld in 2014 and soon became one of the world's most infamous private military companies. Led by the provocative oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner developed into a key instrument of Russian power projection, with deep and direct ties to the Kremlin. Its mercenaries fought on the front lines in Ukraine, propped up regimes in the Middle East and Africa, and exploited chaos to secure lucrative resource contracts before Prigozhin's mutiny against Moscow in 2023 brought him down.

This book traces the Wagner Group's violent ascent and descent, exposing how a shadow army built an empire that seemed to have no end in sight until it turned on its masters. Drawing on a wide range of sources and interviews, Moscow's Mercenaries offers a comprehensive examination of Wagner's inner workings: its hybrid structure, battlefield tactics, propaganda campaigns, and connections to the Russian military. From Ukraine to brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, and beyond, the book shows how Wagner evolved into a global criminal syndicate and reveals why its ambitions led to a fatal collision with the Russian state.

Moscow's Mercenaries explores what Wagner's rise tells us about the future of modern warfare, the erosion of international norms, and how authoritarian regimes outsource violence. Anyone interested in the evolution of mercenary warfare, great power competition, and the dark underbelly of global security stands to learn important lessons from this well-timed and insightful book.

Review Quotes

In a liminal world order where pseudo-powerful states increasingly seek global influence on a shoestring budget, what does the Wagner Group's dynamic rise and precipitous fall reveal about the nature of state-sanctioned violence in the twenty-first century? Authored by some of the world's foremost observers, this timely book reveals how Moscow's premier mercenary force, analyzed through its principal-agent problems and coup-proofing function, became an uncontrollable political and criminal blueprint for others. Moscow's Mercenaries is a chilling and imperative account of how irregular warfare serves as a primary and expanding instrument of authoritarian power.--Jason Warner, coauthor of The Islamic State in Africa: The Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront

The Wagner mercenary company may be all but defunct, but as this important and interesting study shows, the model of outsourced authoritarian violence and influence has proven itself, and we can expect not simply Russia but other countries to be looking to adapt it to their own ends.--Mark Galeotti, coauthor of Downfall: Putin, Prigozhin and the New Fight for the Future of Russia

About the Author

Christopher M. Faulkner is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College and a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program.

Raphael Parens is a fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia and Africa Programs and a senior fellow at the Delphi Global Research Center.

Colin P. Clarke is the executive director of the Soufan Center, an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism-The Hague, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.