On the morning of June 24, 2023, grainy videos appeared on social media showing fighters from the Russian private military company the Wagner Group, storming the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. It was a lightning insurrection that posed the gravest threat to President Vladimir Putin in his 23 years in power.
The images reverberated around the world. While many news organizations scrambled to explain who this group was and how they could ever defy the Kremlin, The Wall Street Journal had already answered those questions and more.
Just two weeks prior, the Journal released its documentary “Shadow Men: Inside Russia’s Secret War Company.” Journal reporters had spent months unraveling the group’s finances and tracing its evolution, from a small guns-for-hire-operation to a sprawling web of shell companies spanning four continents.
Our journey started in September of 2022, when a video appeared online of Wagner Group founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, recruiting criminals from a Russian prison to come fight for him in Ukraine. It was a critical turning point for the group and its founder. Before that, Prigozhin and Russian officials had denied the group existed. The Journal recognized then that Wagner was becoming an important part of the war in Ukraine. Soon after, we decided to make a documentary about the group. Our team set out to make a film about what Wagner had been up to that point and to reveal new details about the opaque network of shell companies that was used to finance it. We wanted to tell this story through as many firsthand voices as possible—from Wagner fighters to victims of their atrocities.
The Journal identified 64 companies affiliated with Prigozhin’s network—some of which had yet to be sanctioned by the U.S. The Journal also revealed shell companies in Africa that took over a gold mine in the Central African Republic to build the country’s most advanced mining operation, which now brings in tens of millions of dollars a year.
The Journal also revealed intricate details about how Wagner exchanged fighters in Syria for gas and oil drilling plots in the country. In Ukraine, Journal reporters showed just how entangled the group had become with the Russian government, tracking military planes bringing in Russian prisoners to fight for the group on the frontline. Along the way, the team also showed how Wagner massacred anyone who interfered with their effort to spread Russian influence around the world.
Wall Street Journal producers, reporters and researchers in four countries spent six months creating the “Shadow Men” documentary. It was an epic feat of reporting that included finding and sorting through many layers of corporate documents spread across the world, as well as convincing people to speak openly on camera about a group that had been cloaked in secrecy for years.
The result is one of the most comprehensive pieces of reporting on Wagner to date.
