Hybrid CoE Working Paper 33: State, non-state or chimera? The rise and fall of the Wagner Group and recommendations for countering Russia’s employment of complex proxy networks

This Hybrid CoE Working Paper summarizes the rise and fall of the Wagner Group, detailing its emergence and transformation from a non-state into a state actor, and discussing a range of countermeasures that can be applied against such organizations. The main conclusion is that groups like Wagner need to be conceptualized and dealt with as non-hierarchical, decentralized, and dynamic organized crime or terrorist networks, requiring simultaneous and synchronized targeting at all levels of the organization.