Guns for Gold: The Wagner Network Exposed

by the Foreign Affairs Committee

House of Commons
Foreign Affairs Committee

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Guns for gold: the Wagner Network exposed

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Seventh Report of Session 2022–23

 

Report, together with formal minutes relating to the report

 

Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 18 July 2023

 

HC 167 incorporating HC 1248

Published on 26 July 2023

by authority of the House of Commons

Foreign Affairs Committee

The Foreign Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and its associated public bodies.

Current membership

Alicia Kearns MP (Chair) Conservative, Rutland and Melton)
Saqib Bhatti MP (Conservative, Meriden)
Sir Chris Bryant MP (Labour, Rhondda)
Liam Byrne MP (Labour, Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Neil Coyle MP (Labour, Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Drew Hendry MP (Scottish National Party, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Andrew Rosindell MP (Conservative, Romford)
Bob Seely MP (Conservative, Isle of Wight)
Henry Smith MP (Conservative, Crawley)
Royston Smith MP (Conservative, Southampton, Itchen)
Graham Stringer MP (Labour, Blackley and Broughton)

The following were also members of the Committee during the 2022–23 session:

Tom Tugendhat MP (Conservative, Tonbridge and Malling), Stewart Malcolm
McDonald MP (Scottish National Party, Glasgow South)

Powers

The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the internet via www.parliament.uk.

Publication

© Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2023. This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament Licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright-parliament/.

Committee reports are published on the Committee’s website at www.parliament.uk/facom and in print by Order of the House.

Contacts

All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Foreign Affairs Committee, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 4050; the Committee’s email address is facparliament.uk.

You can follow the Committee on Twitter using @CommonsForeign.

Contents

1. Summary

   3

2. 1A decade of entrenching Russian interests abroad

   5

3. Growth of the network

   7

4. The perceived benefits of Wagner

   18

5. A direct and indirect tool of the Russian state

   18

6. Incentives for buyers

   19

7. The price of Wagner military deployments

   21

8. Operating with impunity

   21

9. Delivering unreliable results

   24

10. Thriving in instability

    24

11. Coming out of the shadows: Renewed Illegal Invasion of Ukraine

    27

12. National security implications

    28

13. 2Responses to the Wagner Network

    31

14. The UK's general response

    31

15. A focus on Ukraine, not Africa

    32

16. Cross-departmental working

    33

17. Specific actions taken by the UK Government

    34

18. Tracking and sanctioning

    34

19. Carrot and stick diplomacy

    40

20. 3What next?

    45

21. What next for Wagner?

    45

22. What next for 'PMCs'?

    46

23. Conclusions and recommendations

    52

24. Appendix 1

    59

25. Appendix 2

    73

26. Formal minutes

    76

27. Witnesses

    77

28. Published written evidence

    78

29. List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament

    79

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