About the author(s):
Dmitry Gurin specialises in international human rights law and sanctions. He is a Senior Legal Advisor at the European Prison Litigation Network, which he joined in 2022. He has over 13 years of experience in international litigation. He previously served as a lawyer at the Registry of the ECHR (2016-2020), and has represented both applicants and governments in proceedings before the Court - initially (2011-2015) as a lawyer at the Office of the Russian Government Agent to the ECtHR, and, since 2021, as a human rights lawyer with international NGOs.
Since 2021, Dmitry has also been engaged in human rights advocacy, first as a senior lawyer at Memorial Human Rights Centre and later at EPLN. In parallel with his litigation work, he has contributed to legal education and training, teaching legal professionals and students as an independent expert for the Council of Europe, as an associate professor at the Russian State University of Justice (2012-2015), and, since 2023, as a lecturer at the Free University, where he delivered a course on criminal policy.
This post forms part of the Wagner Symposium hosted by the Armed Groups and International Law blog. The introductory post can be found here. The symposium seeks to foster deeper discussion on how best to address the Wagner Group and its affiliated entities.
For nearly a decade, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group evolved from a small private military company into a complex, multi-tiered military enterprise. Operating across multiple continents, with thousands of personnel, vast supply chains, and diversified operations – from logistics, mining, and smuggling to full-scale warfare – Wagner was simultaneously presented as an autonomous actor and an arm of Russian strategic interests.
Despite (or because of) the reach of its operation and their visibility, Wagner’s legal status remained purposefully obscure. Its operatives were granted access to state military resources, including air logistics and prisons for combat recruitment, they were entrusted with the most sensitive tasks, including “purges” of other proxy forces in Ukraine, the group was financed from the state budget and yet – it continued to “officially” operate outside the Russian (or anyone else’s) armed forces’ formal structure. This duality deepens with the group’s relatively recent rebranding as the “Africa Corps” under the Russian Ministry of Defence / Main intelligence directorate (GRU), complicating even further the questions about its nature: is it a state actor, a private contractor, or a novel hybrid – an “army without a nation”?
State vs. Non-State Actors Under International Law
The distinction between state and non-state actors is central to legal responsibility under international law. State actors – its organs, or persons and entities vested with the functions of the state organ – are (presumed to be) controlled by states, and their actions, omissions, acts, and decisions are directly attributable to the state. Non-State actors – such as private military contractors (PMCs) – operate with a degree of independence that in some scenarios allows the State to be held accountable if it controls such an actor, thereby attributing the NSA’s actions to the State, or, on the contrary, distances the State from the actions of the independent entity, making it responsible at most for the breach of its positive obligations (to prevent, supress and punish the wrongful conduct).
Wagner, throughout its existence, attempted to challenge this already problematic dichotomy. From Syria to Ukraine, it has operated under apparent Russian state oversight, even while maintaining nominal independence. As pointed out by Matthew Lauder, Wagner’s flexible structure and deliberate opacity make it resistant to classical legal classification, making it difficult to apply normative frameworks. This ambiguity is strategically valuable: Wagner can act as a proxy, allowing the Russian state to deny direct involvement – reviving the 2014 Kremlin’s rhetoric of “they are not there”.
Wagner’s Global Footprint and Economic Independence
Wagner’s operations in Syria, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mali and Madagascar went far beyond security provision. The group extracted resources (gold, diamonds, timber), supported authoritarian regimes, and allegedly engaged in disinformation and election manipulation. In CAR, it controlled customs posts and ran smuggling networks; in Mali, it was supported by Russian air forces and acted alongside local army, facing joint allegations of human rights violations.
This diversification, and significant profit generated by Wagner Group for itself (as well as for the Russian government and the authorities of other countries, such as CAR and Mali) suggested a high level of financial independence. However, the material and diplomatic support provided by Russia, or other authorities in the area of Wagner operation, indicates strong state affiliation and raises questions about the attributability and immutability of Wagner’s actions to the Russian (and several other) states.
“What’s in a name”: IHL, terrorist organisation, and state responsibility
Wagner Group was designated as a terrorist organisation by several governments, including UK and France, with the latter calling on the EU to join the initiative and to label Wagner on the European level. Beyond the symbolic significance, such a measure would have, among other things, facilitated the freezing of assets, criminalised membership in or support for the group, therefore deterring entities and individuals who have done or were considering doing business with Wagner. The vagueness of Wagner’s structure and unclear position vis-à-vis the Russian state, were as it seems the exact reasons preventing the mass labelling of them as terrorists, even at the European continent.
The question of whether the Wagner Group is a governmental structure, or an independent, non-governmental entity can be approached from a variety of legal perspectives, depending on the context and the desired outcome of such an iteration. While such a utilitarian, functionalist approach can be criticised for its bias and deliberate abandonment of the intellectual “search for truth,” it obviously places efficiency at the forefront.
International humanitarian law, as the obvious first choice of the legal framework to assess Wagner’s status as a state or non-state actor gives at least some important guidance on this matter. Under Article 43 of Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the Geneva Conventions, the “armed forces of a party to a conflict” include “all organized armed forces, groups and units which are under a command responsible that party for the conduct of its subordinates… Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system which, ‘inter alia’, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.”. According to the ICRC Commentary, by providing this distinction between armed forces, groups and units, the Diplomatic Conference for the adoption of AP I “took full account of the new forces which have appeared on the modern battlefield in the course of the last few decades.” The ICRC further clarifies that these forces must display a minimum degree of discipline and internal structure.
Wagner clearly fits this description: it maintained internal hierarchy, deployed in coordination with Russian forces, provided “security services” and training to the Malian and CAR governments and armed forces, and carried out missions aligned with foreign and domestic policies of several states, including Russia, CAR, and Mali. The ICRC’s Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under IHL notes that “belonging to” a party to the conflict as part of its armed forces does not necessary require officially declared relationship or agreement – it can be inferred from tacit agreement or conclusive behaviour. Russia’s public tolerance – and at times, endorsement – of Wagner’s actions, as well as agreements signed by Wagner or its local entities in Mali and CAR with the respective governments, already appear to meet this threshold.
The 2020 ICRC Commentary to the Third Geneva Convention suggests that a contract, logistical support, or joint operations (as well as the lack of denial of this fact by the state) may demonstrate that the state accepts that the group fights on its behalf. The group also “belongs” to the state armed forces when the state exercise “overall control” over the group. Without delving too much into the differences between the stringent test of the “effective control” developed and applied by the ICJ (requiring not only support from the state, but also specific instructions or control over specific operation – ICJ, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua case, Merits, Judgment, 1986), not to be confused with the criteria of “effective control over the territory” applied by the European Court of Human Rights for the purpose of establishing jurisdiction of the state under the ECHR, and the less rigid test of “overall control” developed by the ICTY (ICTY, Tadi? Appeal Judgment, 1999), it must be noted that the ICRC, in general considers that “the most recent decisions of international tribunals display a clear tendency to apply the overall control test for the purposes of classifying a conflict” [as international or non-international]. The difference between the existing approaches would lie, inter alia, in the purpose of the respective tests: attribution of conduct for the purpose of establishing State responsibility in the case of the ICJ, and proper identification of the party to the conflict for the purpose of its classification as international or non-international in the case of the criminal tribunals or the ICC.
Indeed, as further noted by the ICRC (with reference to Antonio Cassese) the “notion of overall control might prevent the intervening Power from hiding behind the proxy’s veil in order to avoid its obligations and international responsibilities under humanitarian law. It also makes it possible to challenge the third State’s claim that the actions were in fact those of actors who could not be considered as officials or persons acting on its behalf and therefore that it could not itself be considered as a Party to the conflict a relationship of ‘overall control’.” This is especially relevant given Russia’s, CAR, and Malian logistical and institutional backing of Wagner’s campaigns and operations coupled with a convenient lack of acceptance of the Wagner Group as part of the respective armies.
Here, the immediate but also far-reaching purpose of establishing this link between the Wagner Group and the state forces of Russia, CAR and Mali (as well as the number of other countries) can pursue the practical goal of classifying one of the dozens of military conflicts around the world in which Wagner has participated over the years as international, triggering the application of rules applicable to international armed conflicts, including the rules of occupation, and hypothetically raising the question of Russia’s, CAR, and Mali (or their officials’) responsibility for violations committed in the course of these conflicts.
Classifying Wagner as part of the military of these and other countries allows for the invocation of state responsibility, which is essentially a necessary, partly legal, partly factual construct to hold states accountable for atrocities committed by Wagner’s forces. This path allows for action through regional human rights forums (e.g., the European Court of Human Rights, for the events before Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe – the way taken by FIDH, Memorial and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression in their joint action; as well as African Court of People and Human Rights – when it comes, e.g., to Mali, Madagascar, Chad, Congo and other countries under the jurisdiction of the Court, where Wagner allegedly operates, including Niger – where Africa Corps forces were deployed in 2024), their global counterparts (UN treaty bodies, most notably the CCPR, whose jurisdiction over individual complaints covers a significant part of Wagner’s area of operations on the African continent), and finally the ICJ (e.g. on the basis of violations of human rights conventions or other instruments prohibiting certain types of acts under international law, which would require the active participation of States in order to initiate such proceedings.). But even within this state-centered direction, the existing diversity of legal tests and approaches would require significantly different analyses of the same set of facts or collection of entire different evidence in order to attribute Wagner’s action to the respective governments .
This state-centric view further risks shielding individual Wagner actors, and the organisation itself, from international responsibility, or worse – providing them with plausible deniability. On the other hand, certain mechanisms of international investigation and accountability, such as the UN Working group on the use mercenaries – a special procedure established by the UN Human Rights Council – could not be triggered if Wagner is considered solely and exclusively as a state actor. Therefore, a hybrid approach that allows the Wagner Group to be considered in its complexity, with its ever-changing modus operandi, is essential to acknowledge state complicity while preserving avenues for individual and corporate accountability.
Conclusion
The Wagner model is both a legal and operational anomaly – modular, elusive, and calibrated for legal impunity. Partly due to the deliberate obscurity of their status, countering Wagner and now the Africa Corps seems like a complex task, but all the more urgent and, not entirely impossible, especially through coordinated international response – combining investigative mechanisms, intelligence collaboration, and accountability forum which would not experience jurisdictional constraints faced by the existing mechanisms. The lack of a clear answer to the question of the status of the Wagner Group should not be an obstacle in this already complicated endeavour – in the end, it seems to be (or must be) a purely utilitarian matter, allowing the coexistence of different points of view that would make it possible to address the various scenarios in which this entity functions, in any case providing a basis for its accountability. The international legal order must adapt or risk erosion by evolving threats, such as Wagner.