The Wagner Group’s Little Black Book: Decoding Command and Control of Russia’s Irregular Forces

From the moment the Wagner Group surfaced in Ukraine amid Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, two critical questions have persisted: Who was in charge of Wagner? How much control did the Kremlin have over the paramilitary? These questions are not just academic—they go to the heart of accountability for war crimes and atrocities committed by Wagner forces in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa.

It turns out that partial answers are encoded in leaked phone directory data, calendar entries, personnel records, and internal documents, which reveal that Wagner’s command structure was far more state-directed than previously thought. While Wagner was publicly framed as a private military company (PMC), evidence suggests that it functioned more like a Kremlin-directed paramilitary force, with its leadership coordinating with Russian officials at the highest levels. Andrei Troshev, Wagner’s director, was just as central to its operations as founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and commander Dmitry Utkin, orchestrating missions that aligned with the Kremlin’s strategic objectives.

In fact, Troshev sat at the very center of the Wagner Group’s long hidden command and control structure from 2014 to 2021, overseeing the hiring, firing, payment, injury and death benefits, deployment, and discipline of some 1,915 individuals categorized as commanders in Wagner’s personnel records. On Troshev’s watch, at least 13,100 men deployed to six countries across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Troshev continued to play a leading role in Wagner’s operations.

Indeed, in a sign of Troshev’s importance to Russia’s irregular warfare strategy, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin appointed him to oversee the transition of Wagner forces into successor units managed by the defense ministry, one month after Prigozhin and Utkin were killed in a plane crash in August 2023. Putin even publicly acknowledged in a press interview following the mutiny that Troshev had served as Wagner’s top commander from the start. But Troshev, Prigozhin, and Utkin did not operate in a vacuum. They operated within a larger network of Kremlin officials who actively shaped Wagner’s missions.

Internal correspondence and memos generated for Prigozhin’s front company, Evro Polis, and related subsidiaries reveal the Kremlin’s deep entanglement from the very outset, highlighting the Russian government’s significant role in facilitating operations that likely resulted in hundreds of atrocities committed by Wagner forces across three continents. New America’s Future Frontlines program conducted an independent analysis of hundreds of records from a leaked cache of internal documents held C4ADS, a DC-based global security nonprofit. The data holdings include files a leaked data from Evro Polis and related subsidiaries.

Although Putin effectively disbanded Wagner in the wake of the June 2023 Wagner mutiny, its grim legacy endures—from massacres in Mali to executions in Syria and countless war crimes in Ukraine. Now, as Russia seeks to reshape the shadow armies it has deployed to Ukraine, Africa, and the Middle East, even as international bodies like the Council of Europe call for the Russian government to be held to account for Wagner Group atrocities, another urgent question looms: Does the Russian state bear responsibility for irregular paramilitaries like Wagner?

Understanding Wagner’s true nature is critical for answering that question and prosecuting suspected perpetrators of atrocities, especially in light of Wagner’s well documented involvement in war crimes. If the Wagner Group was state-directed, or if substantive evidence showed that the Russian government held effective control over its forces or that Russian officials were complicit in breaches of international law, it would not only blur the lines between state and private military actions but also raise the stakes for holding the Russian state itself accountable for atrocities committed under Wagner’s banner.

From Wagner’s inception, its stakeholders amplified the fog of war to shroud the Wagner Group’s command and control structure in secrecy, triggering intense legal debate about accountability for atrocities attributed to Russia’s premier paramilitary expeditionary force. The mystery surrounding the hierarchy of decision-making lay at the very heart of the argument over who exercised control over Wagner forces implicated in breaches of international law. Many have rightly argued that, absent a clear picture of superior-subordinate relationships and a fuller understanding of Kremlin involvement, pursuing accountability is a towering task.

Whatever the outcome of the ongoing war in Ukraine, questions about criminal liability and recompense for the Wagner Group’s alleged war crimes and other violations of international law are likely to rank high on the list of concerns. In February 2023, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General charged Prigozhin and the Wagner Group with involvement in thousands of war crimes. Ukrainian prosecutors also subsequently submitted an official request to authorities in Finland that same year to initiate an investigation into a Wagner-linked fighter who fled the Donbas front and allegedly entered Finnish territory on a false passport.

In December 2023, a former Wagner Group commander and co-founder of Wagner’s competitor Redut named Igor Salikov submitted written testimony to the International Criminal Court in the Hague that alleged the involvement of Wagner fighters and officials with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in war crimes linked to paramilitary operations in Ukraine. Salikov is one of three Wagner fighters who have defected and publicly described the involvement of the FSB and Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) in overseeing paramilitary operations that resulted in atrocities. But to date, no Wagner commander has been tried and convicted on charges of atrocities outside of Ukraine.

Before Putin’s admission in June 2023 that the Kremlin expended nearly $1 billion in state funds on Wagner operations and even after, Putin denied the paramilitary’s very existence, dismissing any suggestion that the government had a hand in directing the operations of soldiers for hire employed by Prigozhin’s web of front companies. Prigozhin played along with the fiction for years, initially denying any knowledge of or connection to Wagner’s operations, going so far as to bring lawsuits against Russian and international journalists who documented his involvement.

The Kremlin’s fallback defense relied on Article 359 of Russia’s criminal code, which explicitly prohibits Russian citizens from participating in foreign wars as mercenaries for profit. This reasoning, however, was circular and tautological. While the Kremlin repeatedly insisted that mercenary activity was illegal under this statute, it simultaneously ignored the fact that another legal framework, the law on arms as amended in 2007, allowed state-owned companies like Gazprom to contract quasi-private military security services, thus permitting the very kind of operations that Wagner engaged in. The 2007 amendment to an executive order was initially issued by former president Boris Yeltsin—one of several laws and presidential decrees that Putin subsequently used to give state-owned enterprises and firms designated as strategic for Russia’s national interest a wider remit to militarize their security operations. In other words, law that prohibited one form of activity—mercenarism—was conveniently silent on the parallel activity it enabled.

But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Prigozhin suddenly and conspicuously switched gears, claiming several months later in September of that year that he was solely responsible for the creation of the paramilitary—one that the Kremlin came to rely on to offset the bite of sanctions and to prosecute its war of aggression against Ukraine. Prigozhin received a greenlight from the Russian government to recruit tens of thousands of prisoners into Wagner’s ranks. The arrangement called for combat pay, post-service amnesty, and death benefit bonuses for qualified prisoners who volunteered to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine. Yet, even then, Putin rarely if ever publicly acknowledged Wagner’s prominent role until Prigozhin’s mutiny forced the issue.

The sine qua non of the Wagner Group was plausible deniability for Putin and the Kremlin for actions that went beyond the bounds of international law. But the denials held a tiny kernel of truth. Leaked memos signed and initialed by Utkin, Troshev, and other leaders frequently referred to Wagner simply as “the company,” but there was no company charter, no board of directors, not even a physical address.

Instead, Wagner employees simply referred to the sprawling network of individuals and entities at the heart of Wagner’s operations as “the back office.” This nebulous structure was fit for purpose, setting up the Wagner Group as a smokescreen that masked covert operations that were substantively backed and, in some cases, directed by the Russian state. But through the smoke, there was evidence of substantial Kremlin involvement in setting the scope and scale of Wagner’s mission and the tempo of Wagner operations.

Contingents of armed Russians were undeniably scoring battlefield victories for Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. Soon, similar forces surfaced in Sudan, Libya, the Central African Republic, and eventually Mali. For a supposedly nonexistent entity, the Wagner Group’s global reach—and the resources at its disposal—expanded at a remarkable rate that set Western strategists on edge. Anxiety in Washington and other Western capitals seemed to stem primarily from the inability to neatly define the relationship between Putin and Prigozhin and difficulties with pinpointing the center of Wagner’s command and control structure.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin’s involvement was widely presumed yet never proven. The specifics of Wagner’s connections to the state were shrouded in secrecy and obfuscation. The result was a ponderously slow and often ineffective sanctions review process that fell wide of the mark for years before the Biden administration stepped up enforcement and spurred the European Union to take more targeted action in early 2022.

But the struggle to locate the administrative center of Prigozhin’s network of front companies has presented a puzzle to those seeking accountability for Wagner’s actions in Ukraine and beyond. Indeed, until the grand opening of the “PMC Wagner Group Center,” on the grounds of a St. Petersburg office building in November 2022, well into the paramilitary’s lifespan, no entity in Russia’s corporate register bore its name. Even then, the real estate development and construction firm that actually built the towering structure was enmeshed in Prigozhin’s web of shell companies, while the registered director of the PMC Wagner Group Center was listed as the former head of quality control of Kalashnikov Concern, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned arms conglomerate Rostec.

In fact, analysis of the available data indicates that Rostec’s fingerprints permeated many aspects of the Wagner Group’s operations during Prigozhin’s tenure. For example, Rostec subsidiary Technopromexport made substantial investments in energy industry projects in Syria that overlapped with profit-making ventures spearheaded by Wagner-linked companies. Wagner’s leaders hired, trained, and tasked personnel to deliver and operate sophisticated Rostec-made weapons systems under military-technical cooperation agreements between the Russian state and its foreign clients, overseen by the Russian defense ministry’s Main Operations Directorate (МО РФ). All indications are that the state-owned arms behemoth and its export arm, Rosoboronexport, continue to play a central role in shaping the operations of Wagner’s successor, the Africa Corps.

Rostec is a central pillar of the country’s military-industrial complex, fulfilling the majority of the defense sector’s needs. The Main Operations Directorate plays a crucial role in overseeing military-technical agreements with Rostec’s foreign clients. The directorate is responsible for coordinating military-technical cooperation (военно-техническое сотрудничество) between Russia and foreign states and managing the sale, production, and transfer of military equipment and technology. These agreements are essential for supporting Russia's geopolitical and defense strategies by strengthening relationships with allied states and promoting its defense industry abroad.

Russia’s Federal Law on Military-Technical Cooperation lays the legal groundwork for this cooperation, ensuring compliance with international arms control agreements while promoting Russian military technology exports. The Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation oversees contracts with foreign states, while the state corporation Rosoboronexport acts as the sole intermediary for military exports, handling all international sales of military hardware and services. The Main Operations Directorate works closely with Rosoboronexport and other state agencies to ensure these transactions align with Russia’s national security objectives and broader foreign policy.

Founded as a unitary state enterprise in 2008, Rostec has expanded its reach beyond military technology to include civilian industries, consolidating over 800 scientific and manufacturing organizations. By 2023, its revenue surpassed 2.9 trillion rubles, making it indispensable to both Russia’s defense capabilities and its economic stability​. Indeed, as recently as July 2024, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Rostec as “a systemically important holding, a state corporation that plays an absolutely decisive role in the production of military-industrial complex products.”

Of course, selling and exporting weapons to foreign clients does not in and of itself constitute a crime; international arms sales are a legitimate business. Even the imposition of UN embargoes on sales and exports of weapons to states embroiled in conflict and regimes implicated in human rights abuses traverses several gray areas in international law. But evidence of the connection between Rostec, Rosoboronexport, and Wagner’s actions does raise questions about the individual liability of officials within both Wagner and Rosoboronexport as well as the defense ministry.

Notably, a close examination of the content and metadata of several key internal documents analyzed by New America and culled from C4ADS data holdings on Evro Polis and subsidiary companies, including leaked data, indicates that internal records produced by Wagner staff may have originated from or passed through the Federal Agency for State Property Management. The Kremlin-directed agency serves as the steward of state-owned enterprises like Rostec, shipping giant Sovcomflot, and energy behemoth Gazprom. Known as Rosimushchestvo, the agency manages state assets, which include shares in state-owned federal unitary enterprises.

All of the above has important implications for understanding how the Wagner Group’s command and control structure and leadership interfaced with Russian state entities under Kremlin control. Our year-long review of phone directory data, calendar entries, and leaked internal correspondence, cross-referenced with publicly available information such as corporate registry records and statements by Wagner leaders and Russian officials, reveals that Wagner’s top tier of leadership interfaced regularly with Russian government entities throughout Prigozhin’s tenure as the paramilitary’s frontman.

We used a variety of methods and tools to surface insights into the organizational structure and operational culture of the Wagner Group, including basic document review, network analysis, and metadata analysis. In some instances, we also used statistical regression and artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Claude to examine relationships between variables in the data. It is important to note that while the analysis that follows and the conclusions that flow from them are thorough and have been cross-checked, the documents we examined represent only a fraction of the available data. This report and others in this series, therefore, draw only preliminary conclusions on the presumption that more research is needed.

As we outline further below, the available evidence points to several levels of superior-subordinate relationships that informed orders and directives that Wagner leaders and field operatives acted on. Communications data that we examined strongly suggest that Wagner, far from being an independent entity, was embedded within Russia’s defense and intelligence framework, serving as a covert tool for projecting power abroad. The data indicates that Wagner functioned as an irregular arm of the Russian military, managed at various levels by Russian elites in both the public and private sectors—sometimes through arm’s-length arrangements, sometimes with hands firmly on the wheel. While that might seem to be a statement of the obvious, such evidence could have significant ramifications for ongoing and future efforts to bring Wagner to account.

Communications records and related data paint a picture of an organization that from the outside sometimes appeared to be highly decentralized and disconnected from the Russian state, but that in reality from the inside was tightly networked around a few central nodes of leadership that frequently interfaced with Russian government officials and agencies. As potential claimants come forward and international organizations push for action to establish an independent tribunal on the war in Ukraine, uncovering the true extent of the Wagner command network will be critical for determining who bears responsibility for specific crimes, not only within Wagner but also within Russia’s governing apparatus.

A high-ranking Russian military officer responsible for quality control for weapons and drones. A top doctor at the SOGAZ International Medical Clinic in St. Petersburg, which counted Putin’s daughter as a top stakeholder. A man from the Center for Combating Extremism at Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. These unlikely figures had one thing in common: They were all on speed dial in the Wagner Group’s phone book.

Buried within a cache of leaked documents, one innocuous-looking file containing rows of hundreds of names and multi-digit numbers turned out to be much more than it seemed. Dubbed “the phone book” by our team of researchers, it was a coded directory—a digital Rolodex that revealed Wagner’s inner workings. With over 500 entries tied to influential figures, this document offered unprecedented insight into the Wagner Group’s covert operations, exposing a network of individuals and entities connected to Russia’s premier paramilitary force.

The spreadsheet grouped individuals by organizational function, location, and area of operations, providing detailed contact information, including a unique code, SIM card number, mail number, and backup contacts. As a day-to-day internal reference, the document was precise and functional, leaving no room for ambiguity or obfuscation. It turned out that many of those named in the document mapped neatly to the shadow structure at the heart of the Wagner Group’s operations—an entity referred to in the phone book document and by employees as “the back office.”

Questions about Wagner’s inner workings began percolating in the summer of 2014, when a contingent of unknown Russian operatives under Utkin’s command jumped into the fray during the battle between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists for control over the Luhansk airport. A February 2018 U.S. federal indictment lodged against Prigozhin’s employees at the Internet Research Agency for interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, followed by Wagner’s suspected involvement in the murder of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic in July 2018, opened the floodgates of public inquiry. Since then, journalists and researchers from around the world have gradually pieced together from leaked documents and other sources a fuller picture of the complex logistical apparatus behind Wagner’s operations.

Unlike traditional private military companies or state-operated security agencies, the Wagner Group was not so much a formal unit as a de facto network of individuals and assets spread across a web of legal entities. Prigozhin, rather than serving as a corporate officer or shareholder, enlisted subordinates from his legitimate businesses to act as figureheads for numerous front companies. Troshev, meanwhile, served as the registered general director for the League for the Protection of Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts, the nongovernmental organization that managed payments and benefits accorded to Wagner fighters and their families.

Investigative journalists first exposed a corner of Wagner’s sprawling network—the so-called “Africa back office”—in 2019 and 2020, outlining the contours of a Russia-based analytical cell that managed Prigozhin’s media operations and influence campaigns for the continent. But this proved to be just one subdivision of a much larger behind-the-scenes operation. The actual shadow structure of what Wagner commanders and Prigozhin’s employees called “the company” encompassed the front companies that supported paramilitary operations, natural resource extraction, political influence campaigns, and logistical and administrative functions.

In internal organizational correspondence and files and emails, employees of entities linked to Wagner and Prigozhin’s Evro Polis LLC and Concord Management and Consulting company referred to management of “the company” as “the back office.” Personal relationships, as much as a common enterprise, were the fundamental ties holding this structure together. Much like La Cosa Nostra, the notorious network of Sicilian organized crime “families” that operated in the United States from the 1920s to the 1990s, Wagner Group operations revolved around a hierarchy of command and control that designated roles for field operatives (“made guys” in mafia lingo) that answered to staff and tactical commanders (“capos” and “foot soldiers” in mob slang), who in turn answered to leaders of Wagner’s general staff, the layer in the organization that oversaw operational coordination.

Similar to La Cosa Nostra, which for years was controlled by a “boss” who controls the “family” and makes executive decisions as well as an “underboss” who is second in command, Wagner’s activities were directed by Prigozhin, who was named in one document as CEO. Troshev, meanwhile, was listed in the same early 2014 organizational chart file as executive director, designating him the number two in charge. While many current and former Wagner operatives repeatedly described Wagner’s late top field commander Utkin as the military brains behind the outfit, he was often referred to in internal documents as the “brigade commander.” Both the organizational chart and the phone book pointed to a more tertiary role for Utkin as a major decision-maker, suggesting that he exercised the greatest authority over field operations.

The directory shed a stark light on the full scope and organization of Prigozhin’s back office—matter-of-factly divided into departments such as the “St. Petersburg Office" and subdepartments like “Syria (Oil)” and “Security Platoon,” and listing personnel for countries like Mali and the Congo [sic], Russian government officials, and high-ranking foreigners such as the president of the Central African Republic. But even more than that, the directory showed the connections between them.

The directory listed numbers for the closed, encrypted communications platform that may have allowed for remote access to hubs in distant field offices; sources with insights into Wagner’s operations confirmed in interviews with our team that the dedicated platform was used to insulate Wagner’s clandestine network from outside penetration. Nearly every entry listed backup contacts who could reach the main contact. These represented direct coworker relationships, indicating “nearby” or operationally coordinating relationships, including superior-subordinate dynamics. When mapped as a network, with backup contacts serving as connections between entities, the document reveals the true structure of Prigozhin’s network—the beating heart of the Wagner Group as it existed in 2018.

The directory also unlocked new layers of information from a previously known source: Prigozhin’s personal calendar from July 2012 to April 2022, containing 17,824 appointments after data cleaning, which had already been plumbed for Prigozhin’s extensive connections to Russia’s military bureaucracy. Our analysis of the final four years of calendar entries (2018–2022) revealed a system of three- and four-digit codes that identified Prigozhin’s meeting partners. Meetings with code 367, for example, often involved film production discussions, likely referencing the Hollywood-style movies glorifying the Wagner Group that Prigozhin began producing in 2019. In the directory, 367 turns out to be the code for one Mikhail Petrochenkov from public relations.

Using the directory to decode the calendar showed a consistent correlation between meeting topics and employee roles, revealing Prigozhin’s schedule with unprecedented detail. In turn, Prigozhin’s calendar clarified aspects of back office operations left ambiguous by the directory and its network of backup contacts. Taken together, the back office directory and Prigozhin’s calendar paint a picture of a complex system broadly divided into three categories:

• a network of administrators, academics, and professionals, directly overseen by Prigozhin, who facilitated and obscured the group’s global paramilitary activities;
• the paramilitary wing, under director Andrei Troshev, which carried out military operations in various countries, apparently in coordination with Russian government officials; and
• various Russian state sectors, particularly the military, defense management, defense-industrial, and security services, who provided deep monetary and logistical support, with coordination occurring primarily at the deputy minister level.

Combined with calendar data and publicly available information, the phone book provides a more nuanced and precise map of the chain of command that held the Wagner Group together. Additional analysis using artificial intelligence to identify patterns and draw inferences from the phone book directory file and another separate file that included a set of codes and phone numbers provided additional insights into how Prigozhin’s legitimate catering and logistics businesses may have interlinked with the “company.”

St. Petersburg: The Management and Administrative Hub

The core of the Wagner Group’s shadow structure was centered in St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s home city and the base for his various enterprises, both legitimate and covert. Within the phone book, the explicitly labeled St. Petersburg departments represented the largest clusters of personnel, with five departments encompassing 168 entities (entities were largely individual people but were occasionally bases or offices).

As the central nexus of the operation, the St. Petersburg Office included Prigozhin, who operated under the alias Sergei Petrovich, along with his son Pavel Prigozhin and logistics head Valery Chekalov. It listed 58 personnel in human resources, information technology, transportation, legal affairs, academia, and top leadership figures from Prigozhin’s operations outside St. Petersburg—including geology, real estate, catering, troll farms, and media.

The St. Petersburg departments also housed the upper tier of the leadership of the Wagner Group’s expeditionary forces, which formed the core paramilitary’s management and later evolved into the “council of commanders.” The department labeled “Combat Group Administrators St. Petersburg” in the phone book listed 17 names in this leadership tier, which included Wagner’s titular field commander Utkin (listed by his call sign “The Ninth”) and director Troshev (call sign “Gray Hair” or “BB”), along with other key combat commanders responsible for cartography, logistics, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Troshev’s ties also linked to the St. Petersburg Security Service, which was the second largest department with 53 associated entities and served Wagner’s counterintelligence and disciplinary wing. Sometimes referred to in internal correspondence as the “Special Service,” this unit included personnel from the security team for Prigozhin’s business enterprises. The Security Service appeared to include a person who served as the lead disciplinary officer or the chief of internal tribunals. Wagner’s internal security unit also had extensive links to field operations, in particular Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

Another notable individual in this cluster was Oleg Nikolaeyevich Stepanov, who is listed in the directory document as head of drone equipment and operations. A person bearing the same name and whose job duties in the Russian military as head of military representatives included oversight of quality control and supplies of drones appears to be a potential match.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the department listing economists and accountants comprised the third largest node in the network. Led by Prigozhin’s trusted financial advisor and chief bookkeeper, Yulia A. Kholodkova, the department was composed of at least 26 associated individuals and entities. The department also included Anna N. Prozorova, who managed Prigozhin’s multimillion-dollar real estate empire. Russian journalists sighted Kholodkova and Prozorova at Prigozhin’s graveside, along with the wife of Prigozhin’s body double, Irina Krasavina, in late August 2023.

The smallest node linked to the St. Petersburg Office was Lakhta Media, which as of 2018 listed 17 associated entities. Led by Pyotr Bychkov, Lakhta Media became notable for its involvement in information warfare, where it reportedly managed multiple online platforms to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda and sow discord in foreign countries. This organization was tied to Project Lakhta, which is part of the broader Russian troll factory operations responsible for influence campaigns, including those targeting the United States.

Before joining Prigozhin’s outfit, Bychkov served as public relations manager for the governor of Russia’s Pskov region. Not coincidentally, Dmitry Utkin was long based there while serving as an active duty officer with the 700th Special Detachment of the Second Special Purpose Brigade of the GRU, which often operated in close proximity with the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division. The elite paratrooper unit frequently operated in tandem with the Wagner Group in Ukraine and Syria, and researchers at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) have noted that Wagner has trained a Belarusian airborne unit that historically trained with the 76th Guards.

While St. Petersburg as a whole emerged as the central hub and management center for the organization, network analysis shows a clear distinction between the St. Petersburg office and the military and security operations. Prigozhin himself maintained only two backup connections within the network: one to an entity labeled “Marina” and another to “Anastasia,” identified as an assistant manager. This limited connectivity suggests that Prigozhin deliberately insulated himself—or was intentionally kept at arm’s length—from the network’s day-to-day paramilitary operations.

A separate comparative analysis of the 2018 phone book document and another document created in 2006 containing a list of names, telephone numbers, and corresponding codes seemed to corroborate this supposition. Prigozhin’s code in the 2018 document appeared to designate his role at the top of the management hierarchy, while a small number of individuals in supporting administrative roles carried codes that were sequentially proximate, potentially denoting more centralized power and/or their critical roles in the organizational structure.

The Moscow Wing: Touchpoints in the Official Security Apparatus

The phone book listed 42 entities for the Moscow wing of Wagner’s operations. This set of contacts provides the first clues about the connections between Wagner and government officials in the Russian capital and beyond. The Moscow entities straddle three functional categories: administrative, security, and special operations and intelligence. A notable personality in the administrative category was Dmitry Koshara, Prigozhin’s trusted advisor for marketing and the brains behind a 2012 smear campaign that targeted Russian opposition figures like Alexei Navalny.

Six individuals listed in security roles reveal direct links between Wagner and the Russian state’s security apparatus. Figures such as Kamille Tugushev, noted as the Head of Security, likely oversaw operations, ensuring protection of personnel while also managing internal security measures. The presence of figures connected to Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Center for Combating Extremism (“Center E”) in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the phone book, and the fact that they were linked to backup contacts, further reinforces the close ties between Wagner and state security agencies.

Five individuals are listed under special operations and intelligence. These individuals appear likely to have been engaged in overseeing strategic operations abroad, particularly in areas of operation and regional hubs like Madagascar, Sudan, and Qatar. For example, Vladimir Ivanovich, listed with the tag “Madagascar Spetsnaz,” indicates an individual managing special forces operations in Madagascar, likely linked to securing natural resources or logistics routes. Similarly, Mikhail Egorov is connected to a Madagascar information agency, hinting at a connection with Wagner’s well-documented intelligence operations in the country and wider influence campaigns in Africa.

Operational Web: Linking Command and Conflict Zones

Our review of internal correspondence and records for Evro Polis and related subsidiaries from 2014 to 2023 revealed that the Wagner Group established at least 127 bases across five countries: Syria, Sudan, Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic, reaping billions in profits from gold, diamond, oil, gas, and timber concessions. In Ukraine, Wagner established at least three major bases in Donbas, leaving a trail of destruction that spanned from Kyiv to Mariupol to Bakhmut and beyond. We counted 44 locations where Wagner established mining and extractive operations across five of those areas of operation.

Data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED) indicates that Wagner forces were involved in hundreds of armed clashes across those six countries during the same nine-year period, many of which targeted civilians. Many of the most notable atrocity incidents that arose out of those operations occurred in Ukraine, Mali, Libya, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. While ACLED has not recorded data on Wagner’s express involvement in armed conflict in Syria, clashes near the 26 bases Wagner established in or near oil and gas facilities have been well documented over the years, including the on-camera torture, beheading, and dismemberment of an unarmed Syrian national.

The phone book directory illuminates the close correlation between the Kremlin’s investment of political, economic, and military capital in foreign client states and the Wagner Group’s operational footprint. Relatedly, it is worth noting that Wagner’s personnel records indicate increased spikes in recruitment that coincided closely with the U.S. imposition of sanctions on state-owned Rosoboronexport and 22 other Rostec subsidiaries and defense-related companies in December 2016 and the extension of those sanctions in January 2017.

Those sanctions affected Russia’s defense, aerospace, shipbuilding, and electronics sectors, significantly limiting the targeted companies’ access to U.S. technology and equipment. A critical St. Petersburg-based enterprise included on that list was the Admiralty Shipyard, which services and builds ships for Sovcomflot and Russia’s defense ministry. Similarly, the extension of U.S. and EU sanctions in 2017 against state-owned Gazprom and associated subsidiaries and company officials coincided with Wagner recruitment in mid-to-late 2017. Correlation is not causation, of course. But there appeared to be remarkable parallels between Wagner’s expansion into new territory and the increased number of roadblocks that state-owned enterprises like Rostec, Gazprom, and Sovcomflot encountered in accessing global markets for supply and sales.

The phone book directory mirrored this steady growth in Wagner’s footprint abroad. While nodes for operational hubs in foreign countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mali, and Zimbabwe were relatively small in size in 2018, those in Syria (codename: пески or sands), Sudan (codename: солнечный or sunny), and the Central African Republic (codename: царицыно or Tsaritsino or tsar’s palace) reflected their growing importance in the constellation of Wagner’s field operations as Russia sought out ways to make inroads into new export markets for Russian weapons, energy infrastructure, and mining expertise.

The phone book directory prioritized specific areas of operations, outlining 11 departments containing 174 entities. Four subdepartment clusters (68 entities) were devoted to Syria, and one subdepartment each fell under the umbrella of the Africa back office (9 entities), the Central African Republic (37 entities), Sudan (30 entities), Madagascar (21 entities), Congo [sic] (7 entities), Zimbabwe (1 entity), and Mali (1 entity).

The Syrian operation contained additional subdepartments labeled “office,” “logistics/rear,” and “oil,” but they did not have connections to the rest of the network. The Syria oil cluster, for instance, had no links to other parts of the organization, suggesting a separation of military and extractive businesses. Among the ten Syria oil contacts listed was Ramil Bariev, a geological-exploration specialist who at the time was managing director of Mercury, a Prigozhin-linked firm that transitioned from military catering to hydrocarbon extraction in 2017—an unlikely shift that suggests the rather abrupt change in Mercury’s original business model was closely bound with the tightening of U.S. and EU sanctions on larger Russian firms.

After Syria, the back office’s most active political and military sectors in 2018 were the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Madagascar. In late 2017, the back office had established agreements with the governments of the Central African Republic and Sudan, exchanging training services and security guarantees for resource extraction rights. This arrangement is reflected in the diverse roles of back office personnel in both countries, including translators, political technologists, security service members, field commanders, and members of the Russian government and various African governments.

In Sudan, the back office assigned code numbers to then-Chief of Sudanese military intelligence, Jamal Al-Din Omar Mohammed, and then-Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Oleg Leontyevich Makarevich. Makarevich appears in Prigozhin’s calendar three times, once in a joint meeting with Wagner Director Andrei Troshev, and likely facilitated a 2019 agreement between Russia and former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to establish a naval base and logistics center at Port Sudan. However, the deal’s implementation stalled after al-Bashir’s ouster in a military coup and Sudan’s subsequent descent into civil war. In early 2024, Russia announced it was indefinitely postponing plans for the base.

In the Central African Republic, code numbers were assigned to the country’s president, Deputy Advisor for Disarmament Noël Bienvenu Selesson, an official called Thierry (potentially one of several Central African Republic political figures), and Claude Rameaux Bireau, who transitioned from economic advisor to the president to minister of defense.

The back office’s involvement in Madagascar, its third-largest department in June 2018, appears to have been purely political. To influence the country’s presidential election that year in Russia’s interest, the back office deployed a team primarily composed of political technologists, translators, sociologists, media professionals, and lawyers. The Madagascar operation maintained a link to Prigozhin’s Lakhta Media through Sergei Petrov, who is listed as a colleague of Mikhail Burchik, executive director of the Internet Research Agency. While some security personnel were present—such as Roman Orlov (call sign “Carbine”), a cartographer from the St. Petersburg combat administration department—there were no other paramilitary commanders listed in the directory for the Madagascar operation.

The Africa back office evolved into a separate Russia-based analytical center, with its personnel connected exclusively not to field teams in Africa but rather to leadership in St. Petersburg through a sole node: Pyotr Bychkov, the former Pskov public relations official and political scientist in the international relations faculty at St. Petersburg State University, a beehive of espionage activity since the Bolshevik revolution. Bychkov met frequently with Prigozhin, appearing on his calendar 158 times during the 2018 to 2022 timeframe, a period marked by increased growth in Africa.

Others who fell under the Africa back office umbrella, like the two far less prominent political scientists assigned to Mali and Zimbabwe, did not seem to rate as highly on Prigozhin’s meeting schedule, if at all. But that was not necessarily an indication of their significance in the larger scheme of things. Wagner’s operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, which had seven people listed in the phone book, included Tous St. Alain, a communications professional best known as the spokesperson for Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo.

Prigozhin’s enterprises, and by extension the back office, derived a substantial portion of their funds for illicit and covert activities from Russian state contracts, primarily for military procurement, food catering, and construction. Despite frequent lawsuits by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Voentorg procurement arm against Prigozhin-controlled companies, the activities of the construction and military catering businesses were conducted through more legitimate legal entities with supply chains that required dedicated staff to maintain.

To fulfill large-scale contracts, the back office maintained a substantial workforce in military catering (52 entities) and construction (23 entities) for a total of 75 entities. Most military catering personnel were regional administrators for various contracts. The construction sector consisted primarily of employees from Megaline, a company that received sizable government contracts, including one for the military-themed Patriot Park near Moscow.

The construction and military catering divisions, likely due to their outwardly legitimate and public nature, operated in isolation from other back office sectors. This compartmentalization underscores the unique position of these two large sectors within the back office structure. The delinked nature of Prigozhin’s legitimate businesses in the catering and construction sphere highlights the contrast with the covert side of the Wagner enterprise.

The connections between individuals in the St. Petersburg office and Wagner’s field operations reveal a highly intricate hidden command structure, layered with overlapping responsibilities that had multiple touchpoints within Russia’s official security apparatus, blurring the lines of authority between state actors and private actors. This web of relationships, which extends from bureaucratic offices to conflict zones like Ukraine and Syria, provides critical insight into the operational hierarchies that those investigating alleged atrocities seek to unravel. The network sheds light on how decisions may have traveled through official and unofficial channels, reaching commanders in the field without leaving clear fingerprints.

Prigozhin, known for his bold and provocative social media presence, portrayed himself as a commanding, entrepreneurial force, seemingly at the center of Wagner’s rise. Yet, behind the scenes, his role within Wagner’s operational infrastructure appears far more measured and, in some ways, even detached. Rather than micromanaging the day-to-day operations, Prigozhin’s involvement seemed to be strategically insulated, giving him the space to maneuver politically and publicly while keeping operational and reputational risks at arm’s length. His influence was more about showmanship and vision than it was day-to-day execution of organizational management tasks; he was visible in key moments but notably absent from the routine mechanics of the organization.

The back office phone book directory functions much like a CT scan, revealing critical structures—command links, administrative ties, and decision-making nodes—without offering a full picture of the dynamic interactions driving the machine. Like a black-and-white photo, it captures the skeletal framework but leaves out the colorful details of Wagner’s inner workings—the motives, personalities, and informal practices that animated the organization behind closed doors. But close examination and cross-referencing of data in the phone book listings, Prigozhin’s calendar diary, and other sources allowed us to zoom out and see the bigger picture of the structure that linked governments, allegedly private companies, political and military bureaucracies, and conflicts across three continents.

Decoding the data from calendar, phone directory records, and other sources such as internal correspondence and public statements enables a more precise mapping of operational control—from field commanders to coordinators in Moscow and St. Petersburg, up to the heads of Russia’s vast military bureaucracy. The files and publicly available data demonstrate at a fine-grained level the decade-long-plus, sustained, systemic connection between Prigozhin’s enterprises and the Russian state at multiple levels, sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, but always present.

Broadly speaking, those touchpoints spanned four echelons of decision-making from 2014 forward, which for simplicity’s sake we have labeled with their function within a hierarchy that straddled the official and unofficial and the public and private sectors, as follows:

Strategic Command

The top tier of decision-makers that likely shaped the overall strategy, long-term goals, and mission sets for paramilitary forces like the Wagner Group during the 2014–2023 period. This echelon appeared to consist of senior Russian military figures, defense officials, and Kremlin-linked individuals who likely maintained a degree of detachment from day-to-day operations. While it is believed that their role was indirect, these decision-makers likely influenced policy and funding through arm’s-length mechanisms, such as contract awards, state-controlled companies, defense ministry supply hubs, or private sector firms associated with Prigozhin’s Concord network. Vladimir Putin was seen as sitting at the top, with others likely guiding the strategic vision for the deployment of irregular forces to advance Russia’s geopolitical and economic aims. Yevgeny Prigozhin seemed to have regularly interfaced with this tier, acting as a liaison between high-level decision-makers and the more operational tiers below. The primary functions of this group likely included:

1.1 Setting long-term objectives
1.2 Coordination within the Russian state
1.3 Overseeing high-level missions
1.4 Indirect policy and funding direction

Joint Task Force Management

This tier likely facilitated the coordination of Wagner’s operations with conventional Russian military forces on an ad hoc, mission-specific basis. This tier of leaders may have ensured that Wagner’s expeditions and Russian military campaigns aligned when necessary, creating a flexible relationship that could be activated depending on evolving strategic or tactical needs. Joint task coordination appears to have been formed as needed, with resources, intelligence, and logistical support shared between conventional forces and irregular expeditionary forces on a case-by-case basis. The emphasis seemed to be on short-term tactical cooperation rather than long-term integration. Functions at this level likely included:

1.5 Mission-based coordination of joint operations
1.6 Facilitating shared intelligence, logistics and supplies
1.7 Tactical alignment for specific campaigns

Operational Coordination

Unlike the looser coordination at the strategic level, operational command appeared to have been contained within Wagner’s own structure. Wagner's operational commanders were likely responsible for managing the day-to-day execution of missions, with minimal direct involvement from Russia’s conventional military but some degree of monitoring or guidance from the GRU intelligence wing. This tier of leadership controlled how missions were implemented, ensuring that Wagner’s operations aligned with broader strategic goals while maintaining flexibility. While they may have received high-level direction, decision-making around how to execute specific missions likely rested within Wagner’s operational leadership. Key functions likely included:

1.8 Managing Wagner’s operational forces across different theaters
1.9 Executing tactical plans independently of conventional forces
1.10 Overseeing logistics, intelligence gathering, and personnel deployment within Wagner’s framework

Tactical Command

This tier appeared to be highly contained within Wagner’s structure, with field commanders taking direct responsibility for leading Wagner’s units in combat and covert missions. These commanders likely exercised a high degree of autonomy, making real-time decisions to adjust tactics on the ground based on battlefield conditions. While they may have coordinated with conventional Russian forces on specific missions, Wagner’s tactical commanders probably retained control over their units’ actions. This level of command would have focused on executing operations with minimal oversight from outside Wagner’s framework. Key responsibilities likely included:

1.11 Leading field operations, often with minimal coordination with Russian forces
1.12 Making real-time tactical decisions
1.13 Handling logistics and adapting to evolving conditions within the mission area

This detailed information provides a foundation for the long-term task of pursuing accountability for war crimes allegedly committed by Russia’s irregular military forces. It also explains to some degree how the day-to-day management of Wagner panned out and fragmentary references made in several internal documents to high-flying players within Russia’s official military industrial complex.

Prigozhin’s meetings with high-ranking government officials read like a Who’s Who of Russian power ministries and suggest extensive coordination with the Kremlin over the course of more than a decade, starting in 2012. As shown in the figure below, Prigozhin’s lines of authority as CEO spanned from the highest reaches inside the president’s office and the Kremlin to the upper ranks of the defense ministry and key field liaison divisions and subdivisions such as the GRU and logistics. Analysis of Prigozhin’s personal calendar confirms that he spent a substantial amount of his time engaging with high-level Russian government officials as well as interfacing with the non-paramilitary elements of the network.

Top of the Pyramid: Kremlin Insiders at the Strategic Command Level

Among those who met frequently with Prigozhin at the strategic command level and topped Putin’s vertical of power was the Russian president’s chief of staff, Anton Vaino. During the 2012–2022 period, Prigozhin’s calendar shows 128 entries for Vaino. Meetings in the summer of 2012—one in July and another in August—mark the start of Prigozhin’s more substantive business dealings with Vaino, who served for a time as Putin’s deputy head of protocol and scheduling after a four-year stint in Russia’s embassy in Tokyo, then was elevated to chief of presidential administration.

Vaino’s role as head Kremlin scheduler put him in close and frequent touch with Prigozhin as the president’s top caterer, and their relationship likely dated as far back as 2008, when Putin stepped into the role of prime minister and appointed Vaino as his chief of protocol. Four years later, in 2012, Prigozhin’s Concord M company won bids for multiple government contracts to provide catering services for Putin’s presidential inauguration and other ceremonial events in coordination with the Presidential Property Management Office.

The tempo of Vaino’s interactions with Prigozhin increased in the fall of 2014 after Russian separatist forces shot down Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH17, killing all 298 civilians onboard. The crash triggered a monumental diplomatic crisis for the Kremlin that ultimately led the GRU to task the Wagner Group as a hit squad to take out recalcitrant rebel leaders in Donbas in early 2015. One entry in early November 2014 was marked simply: “Vaino-PMC-Patrushev,” an abbreviated reference to Prigozhin’s private military company and to Putin’s old KGB colleague and secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev.

The meeting was one of three that month that mentioned Patrushev, indicating that Patrushev was brought into discussions about Wagner’s formation and leadership structure early on. Given the frequency of meetings, Prigozhin likely regularly brought Patrushev and Vaino up to speed on Wagner’s doings. The potential involvement of top presidential advisers strongly signaled Putin’s confidence in the Kremlin’s high-stakes plan to make covert operations and mercenaries a central tool of Russian foreign policy.

Calendar entries for other important high-level Kremlin insiders were more sparse, with 32 for Putin’s longest-serving defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, who was forced to resign in May 2024 amid a sweeping purge of the defense ministry that followed the Wagner mutiny, then was appointed as Secretary of Security Council. No less significant were Prigozhin’s 11 documented calendar entries for meetings with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The calendar also reflects two meetings with Andrei Belousov, who served for years as Putin’s go-to economic adviser for matters concerning Russia’s military-industrial complex before he was tapped in May 2024 to replace Shoigu as defense minister. But in these instances, absence of evidence most certainly does not connote evidence of absence.

Internal correspondence penned by Prigozhin himself and numerous credible media reports confirm that Prigozhin was in regular contact with Shoigu and Belousov. Reporting by Bellingcat on leaked call data associated with Prigozhin’s phone number shows Prigozhin was in frequent touch with Shoigu’s defense ministry appointees during the 2013 to 2014 period. Beyond the available leaked phone and calendar data, Belousov and Prigozhin reportedly met frequently to discuss issues pertaining to the Wagner Group’s operations, according to research published by the Dossier Centre, a London-based research organization funded by Russian dissident and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In any event, Prigozhin’s meetings with Shoigu’s immediate subordinates were well noted in the calendar, as we outline below.

Upper Management: Security Officials at the Joint Task Force Level

Corrected at 1:48 p.m. on February 28, 2025: This section has been updated to correct an inaccuracy regarding Mikhail Mizintsev’s removal from office. The original version incorrectly stated that he was fired as head of the National Defense Management Center (NDMC). At the time of his removal, Mizintsev was serving as Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics, a position he assumed in September 2022 after replacing Dmitry Bulgakov.

Many of Prigozhin’s substantive contacts with officials in the government security apparatus appeared to be defense ministry department heads and high-ranking officers in the General Staff whose responsibilities included both setting and implementing Russia’s military strategy. His calendar entries reflect multiple contacts with the defense ministry’s Main Operations Directorate (Главное Оперативное Управление; Glavnoye Operativnoye Upravleniye), which is responsible for strategic and operational planning.

Known as the “brain of the army,” the Main Operations Directorate (MOU) manages troop deployments and coordinates military operations for the armed forces, playing a vital role in translating political decisions into military directives and ensuring they are carried out effectively. The MOU, for example, developed the plans that Russia’s military intelligence wing, the GRU, used to annex Crimea in 2014, deploying “little green men,” mercenary formations, and marshaling various pro-Russian militias to seize control of the peninsula.

The directorate was widely recognized for organizing and coordinating most aspects of Russia’s intervention in Syria, where Wagner Group members significantly contributed to Russian ground operations. In the more recent 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Discord Leaks revealed that the GOU was responsible for activities ranging from providing targeting for specific energy infrastructure and bridges to directing a disinformation maneuver meant to convince Ukrainian intelligence of a joint Russian-Belarusian offensive in February 2023.

Importantly, one of the MOU’s key tasks is overseeing military-technical cooperation between Russia and foreign states, which involves the sale and transfer of military equipment, coordination with other government agencies, and ensuring that military cooperation aligns with Russia’s national security interests. The MOU also takes part in defense planning and coordinates Russia's participation in international military alliances, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CTSO) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), playing a central role in military modernization and training.

The MOU’s blended mandate—setting strategy and ensuring its execution—explains why the directorate’s top officer, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoy, appears in Prigozhin’s calendar. Although only four entries note meetings with Rudskoy, Wagner Group staff made a point of trying to get Rudskoy’s attention in several memos reviewed by our team and previously published by the Dossier Center. As First Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Rudskoy, who answers directly to Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in the chain of command, was an important contact for Prigozhin.

The February 2018 letter from Prigozhin’s employees to Rudskoy advocated for increased Russian engagement in Africa, outlining potential geostrategic goals such as resource exploitation, preferential investment treatment, weapons exports, and countering U.S. and EU influence. Moreover, internal Wagner Group documents from July 29, 2020—the day 33 Wagner members were arrested in Minsk—show Prigozhin’s team drafting an urgent letter to Rudskoy.

Another critical and frequent contact for Prigozhin was Ruslan Tsalikov. A longtime ally of former defense minister Sergei Shoigu, Tsalikov was closely involved in the management of finances and logistics for the Russian military. Before he too was caught up in the post-mutiny purge and resigned in June 2024, Tsalikov was responsible for overseeing defense spending, ensuring the efficient allocation of resources. As one of several deputy defense ministers, he played a role that entailed aligning Russia's defense policies with its broader military and industrial strategies. His name appeared in 122 entries for meetings in Prigozhin’s calendar over the decade-long period.

Tsalikov’s work included managing the quality control of military equipment and overseeing military contracts, making him a crucial figure in maintaining the operational readiness of the Russian military. His responsibilities also extended to public relations and media management, highlighting his broad influence within the defense ministry and also another likely reason for his frequent contact with Prigozhin.

Working with those one step down on the totem pole, Prigozhin interfaced frequently with Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics Dmitry Bulgakov, the department head for logistics, and Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev of the National Defense Management Center (NDMC), the central nerve center for overseeing and coordinating Russia’s military operations globally. The NDMC is responsible for monitoring the country’s defense activities in real time, managing military resources, and ensuring the implementation of defense strategies. Mizintsev replaced Bulgakov as Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics in September 2022.

Mizintsev is often referred to as the “Butcher of Mariupol” for his role in commanding the siege of Mariupol during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and his leadership at the NDMC placed him at the center of Russian military planning and coordination. Bulgakov, whose relationship with Prigozhin dated at least as far back as 2010, when Prigozhin’s firm won one of its first defense contracts, met with Wagner’s chieftain 91 times from 2012 to 2022. While Prigozhin’s calendar shows only six meetings for Mizintsev, their tight ties were revealed in May 2023, shortly after Mzintsev joined the Wagner Group after Putin fired him from his Ministry of Defense position.

Other important figures in the upper tier of management and joint coordination who kept in regular contact with Prigozhin included Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov (15 calendar entries), who oversaw defense construction contracting, and General Sergei Surovikin (eight calendar entries), who served as head of the Coordinating Committee for Air Defense and former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces until August 2023.

Other notables in this category of security officials whose remits did not fall directly within the purview of the General Staff’s direct chain of command included Gennady Kornienko, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) from 2012-2019; Alexei Dyumin, Putin’s former bodyguard and former governor of the Tula region; and potentially Sergei Vladimirovich Pavlenko, another FSIN official whose name matches one of Prigozhin's most frequent interlocutors.

Pavlenko may be the same Russian official who has led the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Kirov region since 2020. If true, Prigozhin’s frequent coordination with a colonel of Russia’s prison service—along with his occasional meetings with other FSIN officials, including at least two with Kornienko—aligns with Wagner’s extensive history of prison recruitment and the criminal backgrounds of many of its senior field commanders, quite a few of whom joined the Wagner Group immediately after serving prison sentences.

Dyumin’s contacts with Prigozhin were a bit less surprising. Recently appointed by Putin to serve as secretary of the State Council and a presidential aide, Dyumin’s ties to Prigozhin date back more than a decade. His role as one-time deputy chief of the GRU, and later as governor of a region where Rostec production plants factor heavily in the regional economy, likely explains the 25 meetings that appeared on Prigozhin’s calendar. This points up another interesting observation that we learned from examining a wide variety of sources that underscored the importance of linkages between the Wagner Group and the GRU.

The GRU Connection

Our examination of the coded phone directory file on its own revealed little about how exactly the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, interfaced with the Wagner Group despite the long history of overlapping command structures and interactions between the two. However, Prigozhin’s calendar fills this gap, revealing frequent interactions with the first Deputy Head of the GRU, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, who appears at least 17 times, including a birthday reminder on April 24, 2017. His relationship with the Wagner Group was both longstanding and high level.

During the June 2023 mutiny, Alekseev claimed he had worked with Wagner “from the first day of the existence of the organization.” Internal documents dated to 2016 confirm Wagner’s close cooperation with the GRU under Alekseev’s management in Syria. Phone records obtained by investigator Christo Grozev show Alekseev and Prigozhin in contact at crucial moments of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including just before its start and during Prigozhin’s mutiny. In January 2022, the pair reportedly met at GRU headquarters over a dispute involving the nominally private military company Redut recruiting Wagner veterans.

Beyond high-level contacts, the GRU provided critical logistical support, weapons, and ammunition to Wagner via its hub near Rostov-on-Don, the 78th Intelligence Center. Also known as military unit 35555, the center falls under the umbrella of the Southern Military District and served as the focal point for coordinating logistics and supplies not only for the Wagner Group but for its competitor Redut. Documents we reviewed reveal that between December 2014 and October 2015, the Wagner Group’s Head of Missile and Artillery Weapons Service, Taran V. Vladimirovich, recorded at least nine weapons transfers from this unit to Wagner for operations in Ukraine and Syria.

This arrangement persisted into 2023, albeit with additional complexity. In January of that year, Ministry of Defense ammunition destined for Wagner was initially routed through the GRU’s 22nd Special Forces Brigade (military unit 11659) before reaching Wagner via military unit 35555. Notably, each delivery required written approval from both Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov and the Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics, a role filled by Dmitry Bulgakov, who served until September 2022, when Mikhail Mizintsev replaced him.

The documented cooperation between Alekseev, the GRU, and Wagner, including logistical and weapons support, highlights that Wagner was far from an independent entity. Instead, it was deeply integrated into Russia’s military apparatus. This state involvement, particularly the approval process from top officials like Gerasimov, Mizintsev, and Bulgakov, implicates Russia’s military leadership in Wagner’s actions, raising the likelihood that accountability could extend beyond Wagner itself to include the Russian state.

Mission Management: Operational Coordination and Tactical Command

While Prigozhin acted as a general manager and government liaison, the paramilitary core of the organization centered on Andrei Troshev (call sign “Sedoi,” meaning “gray-haired”), whom internal company documents consistently identify as either director or executive director of the Wagner Group. This role made Troshev the second in charge after Prigozhin in the overall organizational hierarchy.

Long dismissed by Russian media and mocked on Wagner social media channels as a washed-up alcoholic, Troshev made headlines briefly in 2017 when ambulance workers in St. Petersburg reportedly found him in an alcoholic coma, unable to identify himself, and carrying 5 million rubles and $5,000 in cash, maps of Syria, weapons payslips, a plane ticket to Krasnodar, and an order to buy 24 tents.

Troshev’s back office data paint a very different portrait. Within the back office network, Troshev’s node—and no one else’s—formed the nexus where the St. Petersburg Security Service, Combat Group Administrators, Sudan, Syria, and the Central African Republic areas of operation converged, establishing him as the true heart of the network’s paramilitary capacity.

Troshev’s six direct connections show how he maintained lines of communication across the sprawling organization to coordinate military operations in several countries. One connection linked him to a communications duty officer; two to Sudan, including a duty officer and Alexei Nazarov (call sign “Narva”); and three to Syria, including two duty officers and Alexander Mazunin (call sign “Mauser”), listed in other leaked documents as the liaison officer for the Ministry of Defense at Khmeimim base.

One of Troshev’s Syrian connections was the duty officer for Command and Control Center “Karakum” (ПУС “Каракум”), a Wagner base in Syria. This officer was connected to a large cluster of Syria-based personnel, including Marat Gabidullin, an ex-Wagner and ex-Redut defector who has published books about his time as a Russian irregular. The directory notes that “Karakum” is located in the oil- and gas-rich Hayan Block in Syria’s Homs governorate, which Wagner forces helped recapture from the Islamic State in early 2017, incurring casualties. This facility would have been near—possibly even identical to—the al-Shaer gas plant, where Wagner forces allegedly tortured and murdered Syrian national Muhammad Abdullah al-Ismail (also known as Hamdi Bouta) in spring 2017.

Another of Troshev’s Syrian connections was the duty officer for Wagner’s “Tibet” base in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb where the United Nations described the Russian-backed assault in 2018, which resulted in over 1,600 civilian deaths, as “hell on earth.” The “Tibet” base was also linked to Sergei Chubko (call sign “Pioneer”), who later headed the Wagner Group’s Belarus training mission in the aftermath of Prigozhin’s June 2023 mutiny. Thus, the directory shows the conduits that connect the Wagner Group’s alleged atrocities on the ground to the organization’s top paramilitary command.

Although they are not listed as backup contacts for one another in the back office directory, Troshev was also Prigozhin’s primary connection to the Wagner Group’s paramilitary wing. Prigozhin’s calendar shows relatively infrequent meetings with the network’s field commanders, except for Troshev, with whom he met at least 39 times.

By contrast, Dmitry Utkin, the titular commander of the paramilitary operation under Troshev, appears in only eight entries, listed only by his code number. This pattern, combined with Prigozhin’s relative isolation within the back office network, suggests Prigozhin functioned more as a general manager than a military leader. His role appears to have focused on quality control over logistics, finances, payroll, public relations, and liaising with Russia’s top military brass, while leaving operational decisions to veterans of Russia’s military and security agencies like Troshev, Utkin, and other trusted members of the so-called council of commanders.

From operations in Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic through Troshev and Prigozhin to Russia’s high command, the directory and calendar trace the links of communication and cooperation, with both Prigozhin and Troshev as key nodes. After Prigozhin, Troshev had the greatest hand in organizing Wagner’s operations, which include numerous alleged atrocities and war crimes. Unlike Prigozhin, who is no longer alive to hold accountable, Troshev openly holds a position in the Ministry of Defense, the most prominent of the Russian government’s Wagner hires as Russia began to more openly take over Wagner’s strategy and personnel at home and abroad.

The directory lists duty officers and liaison officers in bases overseas, but prominent field commanders are either absent or occupy peripheral positions with fewer connections. For instance, Alexander Kuznetsov, head of the First Assault Detachment and, after Utkin, perhaps the most famous Wagner Group field commander, appears in the back office directory under the call sign “Ratibor” as part of the Sudan cluster. Despite his outsized reputation, Kuznetsov had only one connection within the back office, one that Troshev shared: to the duty officer at “Spetsnaz” Base in Khartoum.

Perhaps more telling is the absence of Anton Yelizarov (call sign “Lotus”). After joining Wagner in 2016, Yelizarov worked as commander of the Seventh Assault Detachment and Deputy Commander for Combat Training, exercising field command in regions of Libya and the Central African Republic where atrocity crimes are alleged to have occurred. By 2023, he had become one of the group’s most visible field commanders, often appearing on video or attending public events with Prigozhin. Yet, as of June 2018, Yelizarov was nowhere to be found within the back office document.

The fates and current roles of these individuals offer insight into the evolving landscape of Russian paramilitary operations. Some have faded from prominence, while others continue to shape the post-Prigozhin paramilitary landscape. Kuznetsov and Yelizarov have both headed successor formations drawing on Wagner Group veterans, with varying degrees of success. Troshev joined the Russian Ministry of Defense after Prigozhin’s June 2023 mutiny, ostensibly to develop the ministry’s volunteer units. Troshev, with his extensive experience and paramilitary contacts from Wagner’s foreign operations, represents one of several key figures in the various competing offshoots of the Wagner Group’s legacy. But the trail of destruction Troshev left behind during the nine-plus years he served at Prigozhin’s behest as Wagner’s top administrator may turn out to be just as important a factor in determining whether and when justice is ultimately served.

Prigozhin’s back office was the hidden scaffolding of his empire—a meta-structure orchestrating a labyrinth of legal and covert enterprises that shaped the command culture of the Wagner Group. This nerve center did more than enrich its oligarch patron; it projected state power through a fog of obfuscation. At its heart was a cadre of administrators, analysts, commanders, and officials who steered daily operations. Their “phone book,” a living document, reflected this pragmatic purpose: meticulously organized yet often identifying individuals only by call sign, first name, or function—a nod to the insider knowledge required for its use.

The June 2018 directory offers a snapshot of an organization in constant flux. The Wagner Group’s success stemmed partly from its agility, a quality long absent in Russia’s regular military. This nimbleness allowed it to adapt swiftly to diverse challenges, embodying an entrepreneurial spirit rarely seen in traditional military structures.

By June 2018, Prigozhin’s network was rapidly expanding its African operations, a shift clearly reflected in the back office structure. Syria, Sudan, and the Central African Republic emerged as focal points, with Syria serving as a command center second only to St. Petersburg. This Syrian hub linked key figures like Utkin and Troshev to other strategic areas of the operation. Though Libya is conspicuously absent from the back office network at this time, Prigozhin’s team was likely already laying the groundwork there. Reports of Wagner Group activity in Libya surfaced just months later, in the autumn of 2018.

What is striking about this network is how a select few figures bind it together. While many sectors remain insular, with few external connections, a minority of contacts serve as connective tissue, spanning multiple domains. These intermediaries were the true dynamo of Prigozhin's operation, operating on an internal logic that transcended formal corporate structures. In essence, it was these informal, person-to-person ties that made the machine hum. This is why the back office offers such valuable insight: it reveals the actual workings of the organization, not the illusion projected by corporate facades.

The Wagner Group’s operational reach was vast, spanning multiple continents and deeply enmeshed with Russia’s military and intelligence sectors. Evidence from internal documents indicates that Wagner functioned as a state-directed paramilitary force, with key Kremlin advisers like Anton Vaino and military commanders such as Andrei Troshev involved in the planning and execution of operations. This raises significant implications for international efforts to hold Russia accountable for Wagner’s war crimes and atrocities across Ukraine, Syria, Africa, and beyond.

By the summer of 2024, one year after Prigozhin’s mutiny and death, the Russian government had fully integrated key elements of Wagner’s operations and personnel into the Ministry of Defense, including Troshev and significant portions of its rank-and-file. This more overt control of Wagner's operations, particularly in Africa, may expose the Russian government to new legal vulnerabilities regarding future war crimes. However, the atrocities committed by Wagner in the past must not be overlooked.

The Wagner Group’s operational and command structure, as revealed through leaked phone directories, personnel records, and internal documents, paints a clear picture of how deeply Wagner was embedded within the Russian state apparatus. Far from a traditional private military company, it seems clear that Wagner functioned in all but name as a state-directed paramilitary force, with its leadership maintaining close coordination with senior Kremlin officials, military commanders, and Russia’s intelligence services.

Key figures such as Andrei Troshev and Yevgeny Prigozhin acted as pivotal nodes in this command chain, overseeing Wagner’s global operations while interfacing with Russian military and intelligence structures. This intricate relationship underscores the critical role that Russia’s state organs played in Wagner’s missions in Ukraine, Syria, Africa, and beyond, raising important questions about Russia’s liability for the group’s atrocities.

Moving forward, future research should focus on conducting detailed case studies of specific war crimes and patterns of atrocities linked to Wagner, examining how superior-subordinate relationships at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels facilitated these actions. Other areas of interest that still need research and clarification are the roles of specific types of personnel in enabling breaches of international law. Understanding the flow of orders—from the Kremlin to field commanders—and how these directives translated into actions on the ground will be crucial for prosecuting war crimes and holding Russian officials accountable.

Such research will not only clarify Wagner’s command structure but will also provide deeper insights into how state-backed irregular forces are being used as tools of Russian foreign policy, blurring the lines between official state actions and deniable paramilitary violence. As international bodies seek to hold Russia accountable for Wagner’s crimes, these findings will be vital in shaping both legal strategies and policy responses to irregular warfare.