Add Category
It's been just over two months since Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a revolt against Russia's leadership.
The mercenary boss is now presumed to have died in a plane crash north of Moscow on Thursday, leaving the fate of his lucrative paramilitary group to hang in the balance.
Wagner has waged major battles in Ukraine, fought in civil wars and insurgencies in the Middle East and Africa, and has taken control of gold mines and oil fields along the way.
So what happens to it now? Here's a look back at how the June revolt unfolded and what we know about the future of the Wagner group.
Firstly, what is the Wagner group?
It's a private Russian military company that works for money rather than a particular country or cause.
The group consists of professional soldiers described as "mercenaries" and was led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
It's estimated that they've operated in some 30 different countries, including Syria and parts of Africa.
And after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin embraced Wagner fighters in its ongoing war.
That is — until two months ago — when Prigozhin ordered his troops to march to Russia's capital city Moscow from where they were stationed in Ukraine.
He accused Russia's military of attacking his fighters and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu of ordering the bodies of 2,000 dead Wagner soldiers be hidden.
Prigozhin said his perceived mutiny had instead been a "march for justice".
While Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wagner fighters were heroes who "liberated" Ukraine's Donbas region, he labelled their revolt as "treason".
Where did the group go after its 'march'?
In order to avoid bloodshed, a peace deal was brokered with the Kremlin under which Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters were to relocate to an army camp in Belarus.
While Wagner's Ukraine forces handed over a base to Russia's regular military, it's unclear how many of them actually moved to the neighbouring country.
Even Prigozhin's whereabouts were unclear in the days after the revolt.
The mercenary boss was said to have met with Putin in Russia just a week after the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had said Prigozhin was in Belarus.
Then, in the months that followed, Prigozhin intensified his efforts to bolster Wagner's presence in Africa.
He posted his first video address since the June revolt on Monday, speaking from somewhere that looked like it could be on the continent.
"The Wagner PMC makes Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa — more free," he said.
He then said Wagner was recruiting people and the group "will fulfil the tasks that were set".
This attempt to claw back some influence may not have been welcomed in Moscow.
There have been reports of the Kremlin creating alternative companies to take over Wagner operations — though none appear capable of doing so yet.
So what's going to happen to Wagner now?
In countries where Wagner operates through an official agreement with Moscow, analysts do not expect much to change — for now.
John Lechner, a US-based researcher who is writing an upcoming book about the Wagner Group, says the private company has to keep operating.
"Wagner is a going concern. There are contracts, it is a business, it needs to continue," he says.
"From a credibility perspective, [Wagner] will try to give the appearance that things are going on normally, that they are still a partner."
The group's ability to operate in places where Moscow may have no formal or legal presence also makes it an invaluable tool of Kremlin foreign policy.
So, in Africa, Wagner may stay more or less intact under new management or be subsumed by another Russian mercenary group.
Take, for example, the group's status in Libya.
Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, says Russia cannot operate in the north African country without the group because Russia has no official military role there.
That means it could not intervene directly without breaking a UN arms embargo.
"The Russian footprint in Libya might deepen and expand rather than shrink," Harchaoui says.
Similarly, the Central African Republic has no plans to part with Wagner.
The CAR president's political adviser, Fidele Gouandjika, said Prigozhin's reported death was "a great sadness" because his troops had "helped save democracy" in their country.
But as Wagner was there through a state-level agreement with Russia, "nothing will affect the presence of these instructors," he said.
Prigozhin is "a dead leader, we can replace him," Gouandjika added.
What about Wagner's economic assets?
The fate of Wagner's purely economic — rather than security assets — may be even harder to determine.
There has been no information on the fate of Evro Polis, a company Wagner is said to own with oil assets in Syria.
There is little information on how much it makes from its mining and logging businesses in CAR and other African countries.
But trying to bring such assets under direct Russian control, or handing them to another contractor, would be difficult.
"You can't buy a company and fire all the employees and expect things to run the same way," Lechner says.
"Maybe how the pie is divided changes, but the pie is still there."