What remains of Prigozhin’s empire?

Berlin, Riga On the Saturday of the uprising, advertising for the Wagner group had largely disappeared from the cityscape in the metropolises of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The posters were quickly removed. Ads for the regular army hung on some walls immediately afterwards.

But now Wagner is advertising again, some posters are back. On the website, too, the group continues to praise the “best job in the world” – remunerated at the equivalent of around 2500 euros per month, in a “team focused on victory” and without the bureaucracy typical of the army. A map shows dozens of recruitment sites across the country, each marked with a small skull and crossbones.

Experts do not believe that the Wagner company will disappear. “Why should the state destroy it entirely?” says political scientist Andreas Heinemann-Grüder. “In principle, this is a money printing machine,” says the professor at the University of Bonn, who researches the Wagner militia.