Recently, a mysterious paramilitary group called the Wagner Group, run by a crony of President Putin, has been in the news. Wagner is run by a man named Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, earlier in his life, was in prison after committing a series of robberies in the early 80s. According to an article in The Guardian, Prigozhin excelled in the free-wheeling culture in St Petersburg in the early 1990s. He quickly moved from selling hot dogs to buying up stakes in supermarkets and a liquor store. Eventually, he started managing a restaurant called the Old Customs House, where he made meaningful political connections.

Not long after, Prigozhin started to get involved in military-related issues due to being awarded catering contracts for the army. Shortly afterwards, according to the article in The Guardian, he asked the Russian Ministry of Defense for a parcel of land to train “volunteers” that would have no links to the regular Russian army. The organization quickly became Putin’s go-to option for any off-the-books military operations and gained a bloody reputation in Syria. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Wagner has taken a more prominent role within the Russian military. On January 20th, Wagner was sanctioned by the U.S. government as a transnational criminal organization. According to an article in the AP, Wagner allegedly spends over $100 million monthly on the war in Ukraine. It is not clear from the article where precisely this money comes from, but it is a safe assumption that it comes from the Russian state. If the West is to aid Ukraine, limiting the ability of people or entities wishing to provide material support to the Wagner group will be essential.