In 2023, a dramatic series of events led Western observers to declare the imminent demise of the Wagner Group, Russia’s infamous paramilitary force. First, there was Wagner’s costly assault on Bakhmut in the spring, where the organization was estimated to have lost up to 20,000 fighters, many of them convicts drawn from Russian prisons. Then there was the anticlimax of the June mutiny led by Wagner’s chief curator and protagonist, Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. Finally, there was Prigozhin’s suspicious death in a plane crash in August.
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