The war in Ukraine has brought the Wagner Group, Russia’s largest private military company, or PMC, out of the shadows. Before the February 2022 invasion, it operated mostly covertly in Ukraine, Africa and Syria. Its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, even denied the group’s existence and his role until last fall. Today, …

Alexei Yermolaev hardly expected that he’d be proposing to his girlfriend Anna Volshuva in the dead of night, surrounded by packed bags. It was a few days after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Yermolaev had just bought a one-way ticket to Tbilisi in …

The family of Tanzanian-born Nemes Raymond Taremo first heard rumors that their beloved relative had been killed on the frontlines in faraway Ukraine in December last year. They received their last message from Taremo, 37, two months earlier — on Oct. 17 — shortly after he joined Russia’s Wagner mercenary …