The Russian Government Admits Wagner Is an Arm of the Russian State

The Russian government has admitted formally that Wagner is an arm of the Russian state to the tune of about a billion dollars a year in terms of their outlays. The legal fiction did allow a degree of separation that gave, especially the Europeans pause and anyone who was looking for an excuse to continue normal relations with the Russians. In those operations, because it has not been a state entity, it has gleefully engaged into series of massacres that are really war crimes by almost any definition. But as long as the Russians haven't claimed that Wagner is one of their own from a government point of view, then that degree of legal separation allows Wagner to do what it wants.