In March 2025, you published Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare. How does your book break with other analyses of Wagner Group?

What is new for my analysis is that I spend time in these places, and I interview the actors. For my book, I interviewed about 40 guys in Wagner and all the conflict participants as well.

What led you to label Wagner fighters as mercenaries in your book? Your book cites Sean McFate, who defines a mercenary as “an armed civilian paid to perform military operations in foreign conflict zones.” Is mercenary the most fitting term to describe the Wagner soldier?

I don't have to think about things in terms of legal definitions, because I'm not trying to take these guys to court. But they are or were a kind of mercenary in the sense that they were affiliated with a non-state entity that had a very close relationship to the state. Depending on the context, mercenary is a loaded term, and people prefer contractors, but culturally, they were happy to think of themselves as mercenaries.  I suppose now technically that they've all signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense, it was probably true that they are no longer considered mercenaries, but I don't think the distinction was incredibly material either at the time.

From your conversations with various Wagner soldiers, what did you see as some of the main motivators for their reasoning for joining?

It was always many things, right? People are complex and we usually do things for multiple reasons. We have an endless ability to rationalize what we do, too. I try to tell people we're here in America, and America is a capitalist society. It is not irreconcilable in American society, that you can further America's interests and also make money while doing it. In fact, it's inherently a good thing in our society. The Wagner fighters came from across the board. For the most part, they were patriotic. They leaned conservative in the Russian sense, which is not surprising because they are coming out of the Russian military. And for whatever reason, they probably had trouble adjusting to civilian life afterward, and they didn't like being the Russian version of a mall cop. Perhaps they were missing the camaraderie and the adventurous aspects of being in the military. Through friends, they would learn about this opportunity and sign up. They were motivated by a mix of both believing in Russia and being patriotic, but needing the money as well.

Did they view Wagner, or the organization as Russia or as Russian, and acting on behalf of the Russian state, or did they view it as a private company and Prigozhin’s group?

These binaries are not realistic in real life. They called it the Company. They saw themselves as doing work for Russia and Prigozhin. But they recognized that what they were doing was on their own in a lot of contexts also. It was always framed within these broader goals, so even when they were operating independently, it was still within the context of “we're also doing this for Russia too.”

How did you establish contact with the individuals you interviewed for your book? What was your process for gaining trust, and having them share things with you?

I traveled a lot in the CAR and became an expert in the conflict itself. And I speak Russian fluently. When I started reaching out to these guys, there was a natural curiosity at first. I'm sure they thought I was working in intelligence. But in their mind, it's good counterintelligence to meet someone who they think is in intelligence, right? There was a wariness and a curiosity: why is a Russian speaker and an American citizen in Bangui? But I had a longer timeline than other people. I would go meet with them. I would have conversations with them. I would leave the Central African Republic, and they wouldn't see things published about them. Then I would come back, and since I knew the actual conflict and the actors, I could ask them much more interesting questions like, how are you dealing with these specific issues between these specific communities in this specific town? And no one thinks that they're the bad guy in their own story. The Wagner soldiers firmly believed that they were and are bringing stability to CAR, which in some cases they were. I talked about the fact that they were sometimes doing good things. And so that developed a degree of trust that I was able to leverage and keep getting into contact with more and more people.

How do you see Wagner’s operations in the Sahel? Specifically, do you think there is a coherent strategy implemented across different countries, or is it dependent on the local conditions and driven by what those regimes want from Russia?

The reason it was interesting to look at Wagner in Africa is that I take a much more constructivist approach. Geopolitics is made by people? It's the product of all of us coming together and lobbying and writing about and creating what we think should be policy, and Wagner and Prigozhin were particularly good at that in Africa. In Africa, especially these places that are not that important to outside powers, there's a lot of room for entrepreneurial spirits to come and act as if they're representing the state, or lobbying their home state about what the state's interest in these places should be. Wagner was particularly good at selling back to the Kremlin a narrative of why Russia had to be in Africa. Prigozhin was ultimately successful at it. But Africans have a lot of agency in terms of how they deal with Wagner as well. Even when relationships are incredibly unequal, people still have agency to choose to cooperate, or to choose to flee---even at that smaller scale. Inevitably, Wagner's interventions in Africa and Syria and Ukraine were all very different, depending on the context, what the demand was, and what the cultural norms of the environment were. The Sahel is no different.

The Malians wanted them to be engaged directly counterinsurgency and the dirty work, which wasn't the same in Burkina Faso. In fact, Wagner was never there. Africa Corps only came after Prigozhins’s death. The Burkinabés didn’t like what they saw in the Central African Republic in terms of Wagner's expansion into all of these different businesses, and wanted nothing to do with that.

Each intervention depends on the context of the demand, but then also very quickly plans go out the window. Just look at our wars---Iraq did not go according to plan. We ended up in Afghanistan for 20 years having no clue why we were there in the end, or what we were doing. There was no plan. In a war, you might have a plan, but you end up, generally, over time, responding to the crises of the day. You will see in the chapters in the Central African Republic and in Mali that Wagner actually spends most of its time reacting to events on the ground, rather than setting out five-year plans to shape them.

In Mozambique and Libya, when Wagner took casualties or ran into higher costs for reward, they chose to remove troops. In the case of Mali, they had failures across the board. They lost dozens of troops, and the rates of violence increased. What is their motivation for being there? Why stay? Why continue?

Like the United States, there are people in the Ministry of Defense who are for being there, and there are people who would say, “what the hell are we doing there?”  In Mali specifically, it looks like losing guys is not that big of a deal. Look at how many people they lost in Bakhmut. It's more a question of whether there is a reason to be there, how much should be invested, and what can be achieved.

When Wagner lost guys in Mozambique, it wasn't the fact that they lost those six guys that was important. They would lose several times that per day in Bakhmut. It's a question of was it worth it? In Mozambique, there was no Kremlin interest which would mean getting significant subsidies. There was not a lot of economic opportunity for Prigozhin to create a self-financing enterprise. Moreover, powerful parts of the Mozambican government didn’t want Wagner to be there. And so, they quickly pulled out in Mozambique.

In Mali, they have the full buy-in from its leadership to be there. The Sahel is a geo-strategically important area, and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it looked good that there were African partners who were relying on Russia. The narrative showed that Russia is not internationally isolated. It’s a leader in the Global South, combating this Western hegemony. This narrative has been useful, but on the ground in Mali, it's been a disaster.

Few thought, including the Russians on the ground, that having 2000 guys there was going to solve Mail’s problems. If they don't have the interest to address all of the humanitarian, developmental, and political issues that are underlying these kinds of overlapping civil conflicts, why does Wagner have guys running around and getting killed and killing people and causing a big scandal?

This shouldn't leave Europe and the West off the hook, either, because a lot of the trouble came about during Operation Barkhane. Things have not been going well for a very long time and that existed prior to Wagner's arrival. They are clearly making the conflict worse, but they're also not responsible for the continued violence in Burkina Faso or Niger, for example, because Africa Corps just has some advisors there.

In Mali, it's undoubtedly getting worse. There are calls now for getting those guys out and refocusing on training local forces and getting them the equipment they need to take on the jihadists and separatists. No one is looking at Mali saying “this is great, this is exactly where we want to be.” But they don't have a plan.

You have, in previous articles for Foreign Policy and in your book, warned against framing conflicts in the Sahel through great power competition. How can US foreign policy address the escalating violence, insecurity, and human rights abuses? Or should we let the local actors reassert their agency and figure it out themselves?

The people who benefit from great power competition are the elite who are balancing and playing these people off of each other. I can attest that behind the scenes, the Malians are still working with the US. The US should focus on the things it does best. Unfortunately, that won't be USAID, but they should focus on just doing business.

The issue is that no one believes the US when it comes to human rights anymore. These countries know that the reason that they're getting criticized is because they're not important. If you're important enough, then however many civilians you kill, your counter terrorism operation is considered justified, given the existential threat that the terrorists represent. It goes back to the fact that we don't consider terrorism in the Sahel to be an existential threat, so we feel comfortable criticizing these governments for killing civilians as they go about it. It's not a particularly winning strategy if you actually want to retain your influence in those areas. They should focus on investment and making it easier for people to invest in these places because they're very poor. Investment is one of the things that's needed to get out of the conflict trap.

We don't have an interest in sending our own soldiers to the Sahel to combat jihadists. We don't have a good track record, even when we do, of ultimately coming out on top. It would probably be better if all countries left the Sahel alone and allowed people to figure out for themselves what kind of government they wanted, but that won't be the case.