Justice is beginning to close in on Russia’s premier paramilitary force, the Wagner Group. In late October, Polish prosecutors launched an espionage trial for two Russian men charged with disseminating Wagner propaganda in Warsaw and Krakow. Those charges followed a decision in June by Norwegian authorities in Oslo to bring assault charges against a Wagner Group defector who had made a dramatic escape across the Arctic Circle. Counting a set of cases now pending against at least seven other alleged Wagner fighters and collaborators detained in the United Kingdom, 10 citizens of different nationalities are staring down years in prison.
But Finland’s recent case filing on Oct. 31 against Jan Petrovsky, a commander tied to a Wagner affiliate, stands apart: it is the only known prosecution for war crimes linked to the neo-Nazi paramilitary group known as Rusich dating back to before Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Petrovsky is a co-founder and commander of Rusich, formally the Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group (DShRG), based in St. Petersburg. His alleged crimes include the September 2014 ambush of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion near the eastern Donbas village of Metalist in Luhansk Oblast, which helped cement his reputation as an icon of Russia’s extremist fringe. Petrovsky’s case may be one of the first to test the liability of a Wagner Group-linked combatant and commander, and possibly of Russian government officials, for atrocities committed by a Russian paramilitary organization in Ukraine.
Petrovsky’s case also highlights the growing importance of such cases being tried in national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction, rather than other options such as an international tribunal set up specifically for such crimes. And depending on how Finland proceeds with the case, which went to trial Dec. 5, it may help create or reinforce new approaches, too.
With the recent election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency casting a long shadow over the International Criminal Court (ICC), creative mechanisms for pursuing international justice and accountability for the Wagner Group will be needed even more. During his last term in office, Trump issued an executive order sanctioning ICC officials and anyone found supporting war crimes investigations by the court. A pending ICC investigation into Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suspected culpability for war crimes in Gaza all but guarantees a renewal of hostile White House action against the ICC. Such an action could set constraints on the court’s ability to pursue international justice for atrocities linked to the Wagner Group.
A Dramatic Arrest
Petrovsky’s arrest at Helsinki Airport in July 2023 was as theatrical as it was significant. Finnish Border Guards intercepted him as he and his fiancée prepared to board a flight to Nice, France, marking a dramatic twist in his journey as one of Russia’s most notorious far-right militants. Finnish border agents became suspicious after a facial recognition software check of Petrovsky’s passport photo revealed he was traveling under an assumed name, “Voislav Torden.” Petrovsky’s arrest came just nine months after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned him and Rusich co-founder Alexey Milchakov for what it described as exercising “special cruelty” during operations in the Kharkiv region during the opening weeks of Russia’s 2022 offensive.
Implicated in the gruesome on-camera beheading of Syrian nationals in 2017, Milchakov also earned notoriety for the grisly 2014 assault in Metalist that resulted in the deaths of 22 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded four. But Milchakov, who remains at large and possibly active near Russia’s border with Finland, has not been formally charged in connection with the 2014 case. Video evidence from the ambush shows mutilation of combatants — acts Finnish prosecutors are now investigating under charges of war crimes against Petrovsky.
Petrovsky and Milchakov formed Rusich in the summer of 2014 after graduating from the “Partizan” paramilitary training program run by the Russian Imperial Legion, the fighting arm of the St. Petersburg-based and U.S.-sanctioned Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM. The group famously fought alongside Russian separatist commander Alexander “Batman” Bednov before he was killed in an ambush led by Wagner forces. Bednov was, in fact, one of several recalcitrant separatist commanders who openly chafed against the Kremlin’s attempts to rein in local pro-Russian fighters in Donbas amid sensitive ceasefire negotiations in Minsk, Belarus, at the time. But it has long been suspected by close observers that Rusich may have played some part in or at least had prior knowledge of Wagner’s role in the wave of assassinations in Donbas. Part of a wave of far-right white supremacist contingents that flooded into Ukraine after Russia’s stealthy seizure of the Crimean peninsula, Rusich has an active branch in Poland and has a substantial global online following.
Since his arrest, Petrovsky was held at least for a time in Finland’s Vantaa prison, a facility renowned for its progressive rehabilitation programs, pine-shaded grounds, and humane treatment – a stark contrast with the brutal conditions Petrovsky allegedly imposed on his victims. He’s been further spared from awaiting trial in tougher conditions with a decision from Finland’s Supreme Court to decline Ukraine’s extradition request, citing concerns about prison conditions there. Finnish authorities instead opted to pursue the case domestically, and prosecutors filed charges in October.
This case underscores Finland’s leadership in international justice. Since 2009, Finland has prosecuted at least six cases concerning war crimes in Iraq, Liberia, and Rwanda, and in two of them broke new ground. Not only did Finland complete them with impressive speed, putting the often-glacial process of international tribunals to shame, Finland actually moved its court — temporarily — to the countries in question. Known for its innovative prosecutions, Finland’s handling of Petrovsky’s trial could set a precedent for addressing Wagner-linked atrocities. As the world waits to see what happens next, the Petrovsky trial may bridge critical gaps in holding Russia’s irregular forces accountable for their actions in Ukraine and beyond.
Calculated Ambiguity
Until very recently, the Kremlin’s calculated ambiguity in the management of its irregular paramilitary forces had long served to shield it from legal and moral accountability for Wagner’s actions. That changed in late June 2023, when Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made an extraordinary confession. Two days after Wagner Group chieftain Yevgeny Prigozhin abandoned his mutinous “March for Justice” on Moscow, Putin admitted that “the financing of the entire Wagner group was fully ensured by the State,” adding, “We fully financed this group from the Defense Ministry, from the State budget.” After nearly a decade of denying that the Kremlin had backed the operations of one of the world’s most notorious paramilitaries, Putin disclosed that the Defense Ministry poured nearly $1 billion into support for the Wagner Group’s operations from May 2022 to May 2023.
Significantly, the period of support Putin outlined in his speech neatly elided a March 2022 mass atrocity incident in Mali in which Wagner forces were implicated in the extrajudicial killings of 500 unarmed civilians. Putin’s careful bracketing of the narrative also seemed to contradict the statements of his subordinates in the Defense Ministry. Notably, Gen. Vladimir Alekseeyev, deputy chief of Russia’s GRU military intelligence wing and lead coordinator of Kremlin-backed irregular forces, said in a June 24 videotaped statement that he had worked closely with Wagner forces in 2014 and 2015.
Prigozhin’s death, along with that of his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin and Wagner logistics chief Valery Chekalov, in a mysterious plane crash in August 2023, just weeks after he ended his mutiny, capped a tumultuous period of brutal battles in Ukraine and political turmoil at home for Russia’s irregular forces, removing key figures capable of challenging the Kremlin’s authority.
But the decapitation of Wagner’s leadership also left open the question of whether and how the Wagner Group might be held to account for its alleged misdeeds in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali and other countries where it has operated in Africa. The Russian Ministry of Defense absorbed the bulk of Wagner forces into the so-called Africa Corps. Also known by its official name, the Expeditionary Corps, the paramilitary force continues to operate in partnered operations across the continent, most notably in the Sahel, where Prigozhin succeeded in his final months in expanding Wagner’s footprint. While the name has changed and Wagner now operates on a shorter leash, with additional forces also deployed in Belarus and in Russia’s embattled Kursk region, many of the commanders remain the same and the GRU keeps close tabs on its irregular forces.
Recorded Evidence of Control for Accountability
From the moment the Wagner Group surfaced in Ukraine amid Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, two critical questions have persisted: Who was in charge of Wagner? How much control did the Kremlin have over this paramilitary force? These questions are not just academic — they go to the heart of accountability for war crimes and atrocities allegedly committed by Wagner forces in different parts of the globe.
Historically, the international community has struggled to address the legal implications of the blurred line between State and private actors in the conduct of armed conflict. Traditional frameworks for holding States accountable for the actions of paramilitary groups generally rely on clear evidence that the State empowered the groups to exercise government authority or that the groups were acting under its instruction or under its direction or control. However, the covert nature of these relationships often obscures such evidence, complicating efforts to pursue legal accountability. Putin’s admission, while unprecedented, provided a rare glimpse into the mechanisms of State support for the operations of irregular armed forces, potentially opening new avenues for legal scrutiny and accountability.
But Putin’s words pale in comparison to the Russian government’s deeds when it comes to support for the Wagner Group. It turns out that partial answers are encoded in leaked phone directory data, calendar entries, personnel records, and internal documents, which reveal that Wagner’s command structure was far more State-directed than previously thought. While Wagner was publicly framed as a private military company (PMC), evidence suggests that it functioned more like a Kremlin-directed paramilitary force, with its leadership coordinating with Russian officials at the highest levels.
A detailed analysis of personnel records for a little more than 13,000 Wagner fighters, reveals that Russian authorities issued passports bearing false names for more than 5,800 Russian mercenaries from 2014 to 2021. Wagner personnel ranged from tank drivers to anti-aircraft missile battery specialists, reflecting the organization’s deep integration with Russia’s system for managing military cooperation with client States in Africa and the Middle East. The diversity of roles and types of weaponry points to a close relationship with Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-controlled arms export agency.
Internal correspondence and memos from Prigozhin’s front company, Evro Polis, and its subsidiaries reveal the Kremlin’s deep involvement from the start in Wagner Group operations, which likely resulted in hundreds of atrocities across three continents. Analysis conducted by New America’s Future Frontlines program as part of a yearlong study draws from hundreds of leaked internal documents held by C4ADS, a DC-based global security nonprofit. There is strong evidence to suggest that Rusich, which has buttressed Wagner operations abroad for a decade, enjoys a similarly high level of support from the Kremlin. Rusich withdrew from Ukraine in 2015, only for members to reappear in Syria, guarding strategically important oil and gas infrastructure belonging to state-backed Russian firms, as I previously documented at New America. Posts to the group’s Instagram account showed members in the Palmyra region of central Syria, not far from the Shaer gas field where Russian security forces seemingly linked to the Wagner Group filmed themselves torturing and killing a Syrian army deserter named Hamdi Bouta in April 2017. Open-source analysis of videos and photos posted online by Rusich also indicates that members of the paramilitary unit trained at Russian government-owned sites near St. Petersburg and Pskov.
Petrovksy’s case may be one of the first in a foreign court to test the liability of a combatant and commander, and possibly of Russian government officials, for atrocities committed by a Russian paramilitary organization in Ukraine. Rusich, Wagner, and other Russian paramilitaries are implicated in thousands of war crimes committed in Ukraine, an unprecedented caseload far beyond the usual capacity of Ukrainian courts and the ICC.
Going forward, courts in Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands, where universal jurisdiction is enshrined in law, could play a pivotal role in expanding the global reach of accountability. As noted by scholars at American University’s War Crimes Research Office, by prosecuting war crimes and atrocities committed by Russian paramilitary groups, these courts have the potential to close gaps left by international tribunals and set new legal precedents for addressing the blurred lines between State and proxy actors.
All eyes are on Finland as the Petrovsky trial progresses, a landmark case that could reshape the legal framework for holding Russia’s paramilitary forces accountable. Finland’s approach to prosecuting atrocities under universal jurisdiction not only circumvents geopolitical roadblocks like those posed if an incoming White House administration is bent on sanctioning the ICC for a second time around. The legal maneuver also offers a model for nations grappling with the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare tactics. As the trial probes the murky nexus between State and proxy actors, it underscores an urgent truth: accountability for war crimes is no longer just a question of evidence but of political will. For Russia’s irregular forces, the shield of ambiguity and impunity may finally be breaking.