About the author(s):
Promoting information sharing and community building between individuals and organisations working on issues related to armed groups and international law. Providing updates on news stories and publicize academic journal articles and seminars, talks and conferences on issues related to armed groups.
In April 2025, the Armed Groups and International Law blog launched a call for contributions for a symposium to foster deeper discussion on how best to address the Wagner Group and its affiliated entities.
These discussions were prompted in light of Resolution 2556, adopted by the Council of Europe in June 2024, which invited the United Nations Human Rights Council to create a Commission of inquiry on the Wagner group and affiliated entities.
Wagner-linked operations have been documented in conflicts including Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan, and Libya, revealing a direct nexus between armed violence and economic exploitation that often shifts the focus of investigations and prosecutions toward the conduct itself, rather than structural patterns.
The contributors to this symposium reflect on key issues such as the role of the Wagner Group in arms transfers and its impact on human rights, the environmental consequences of Wagner’s operations, and the group’s abuses involving children and violations of children’s rights. Other contributors address various questions of state responsibility, engaged in debates around the doctrine of “plausible deniability,” and examin the role of UN sanctions regime panels of experts. The symposium concludes with a contribution making the case for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry on the Wagner Group.
The editors of the Armed Groups and International Law blog are pleased to present these discussions and hope that they will be a useful tool for states and other actors to take action to address this unique actor.
Posts to date:
- Ara Marcén Naval: Weapons without fingerprints: Wagner, arms trafficking, and the price of impunity
- Leah Sade Olasehinde: Wagner Group and environmental destruction – avenues for accountability
- Laura Perez: The Case for Listing the Wagner Group for Violations against Children in CAR, Mali, and Ukraine
- Robin van der Lugt: Revisiting Plausible Deniability: Putin’s Admission and the Wagner Group Paradox
- Dmitry Gurin: From Wagner to Africa Corps: ambiguity of the legal status
- Aurélien LLorca: The Wagner Group and UN sanctions: inconsistent reporting?
- Lisa Dicker and Erin Bloom: The Wagner Group and Security Sector Reform: Challenges With Prolonged Entrenchment
- Yousuf Syed Khan: Transnational Atrocity-by-Proxy: The Case for a Human Rights Council Inquiry into the Wagner Group
- Joulien Antouly: Accountability for Wagner Group crimes in Mali: exploring domestic prosecutions and Mali’s state responsibility