readable as a thriller."--Mark Galeotti - "An important book about the world's most dangerous mercenary outfit. Margolin unearths new details that will surprise readers."--Sean McFate - "Margolin takes readers deep into the shadowy underworld. . . . A must read."--Clarissa Ward, CNN - "Riveting. . . . It's a vital window onto the weird world of secretive, privatized modern warfare."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An eye-opening, terrifying history of this notorious and widely influential mercenary group.

This book exposes the history and the future of the Wagner Group, Russia's notorious and secretive mercenary army, revealing details of their operations never documented before. Using extensive leaks, first-hand accounts, and the byzantine paper trail left in the group's wake, Jack Margolin traces the Wagner Group from its roots as a battlefield rumor to a private military enterprise tens of thousands-strong that eventually comes to threaten Putin himself. He follows individual commanders and foot soldiers within the group as they fight in Ukraine, Syria, and Africa, sometimes alongside fellow military contractors from the United Kingdom and the United States. He shows Wagner mercenaries committing atrocities, plundering oil, diamonds, and gold, and changing the course of conflicts from Europe to Africa in the name of the Kremlin's strategic aims.

In documenting the Wagner Group's story up to the dramatic demise of its chief director, Evgeniy Prigozhin, Margolin demonstrates that Wagner was not an aberration, but a manifestation of the new geopolitical order of global capital, global crime, and of the entrepreneurs that thrive in it.