Wagner Group

The Wagner group is a Russian mercenary group, created in 2014 by Yevgeny Prigozhin. President Putin has said it received hundreds of millions of pounds in state funding, even though private military groups are banned under Russian law. The Wagner group has fought in Ukraine, Syria and parts of Africa. The group hired convicts from Russia to fight on the front line in Ukraine in return for amnesties. Its fighters have been accused of multiple war crimes including murder, torture and rape.