The most notorious outfit fighting in Ukraine doesn’t even officially exist. In 2012 the company was awarded 92 billion rubles – around $2.8bn – to supply food to the Russian army. Following the collapse of the USSR it declared itself an autonomous republic, before it was forcibly abolished by Ukraine in 1995. This is Dmitry Utkin - callsign "Wagner" - the founder of the Kremlin's "Wagner Group" PMC. Having previously been made up for former soldiers, Wagner has been recruiting heavily from prisons to bolster its numbers in Ukraine.

Source: The Times January 28, 2023 14:42 UTC