Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare by John Lechner

Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare

by John Lechner

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History & Foreign Affairs

John Lechner's investigation of the Wagner Group and its successors — the Russian-state-aligned private military company that operated in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mali — and the broader phenomenon of state-aligned mercenary forces as a new feature of international conflict.

Core ideas
  • Wagner functioned as a deniable Russian state instrument — when official military presence was politically impossible or legally constrained, Wagner provided the capability at the cost of nominal deniability.
  • The African operations — gold and resource extraction in exchange for regime-protection services — are the model that survives Wagner: the playbook didn't depend on Prigozhin and has now been institutionalized under successor entities.
  • The Prigozhin mutiny and death are reconstructed from the available open sources; Lechner is careful about what can and can't be claimed, which makes the book more credible than the speculative material on the same period.
Published2025
Pages288
ISBN9781639733361
ReadDec 2025
Russia, Ukraine

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