The Wagner Group and its relationship with the Russian state

Abstract This article builds on existing literature on privatization of security to create a framework for increasing our understanding of contemporary private military companies' (PMCs) relations to states. By adding country-specific characteristics about government structures and market–state relations to the concept of enmeshment, the concept is developed so that it extends beyond the focus on ‘public’ and ‘private’ in relation to the neo-liberal market for force, and encompasses neo-patrimonial formal and informal systems of governance. This is illustrated by the empirical example of the Wagner Group and its enmeshment with the Russian state. Applying the concept of regime enmeshment shows that the group and its relationship with the Russian state, despite some obvious differences from earlier PMCs, is not a completely new phenomenon but can be understood as a continuation of existing practices of outsourcing security, which is adapted to the Russian context. Furthermore, this article argues that enmeshed actors in the formal and informal regime actively negotiate their position with reference to legitimizing factors, and that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the financier of the Wagner Group, could be seen as a loyalist entrepreneur taking part in an elite competition of patriotism to achieve legitimacy and status.