Catrina Doxsee, Associate Director and Associate Fellow for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), outlines the relationship between Wagner and the Russian state, why PMCs are not likely to be legalized in Russia, founding and evolution of Wagner, changes in Prigozhin's behavior, and global security implications of Wagner actiivty beyond Russia.

'The fact that PMCs are not legal in Russia... gives Putin a tremendous amount of leverage over those PMCs...'

'You have dissent within the ranks... as [Wagner] brings in populations out of prisons there's an intense social stigma between non-prisoners and prisoners in the ranks - as well as between the prisoners themselves given the very strict hierarchy socially in Russian prisons...'

Catrina Doxsee on Putin's Proxies: Examining Russia's Use of Private Military Companies

Catrina Doxsee and Jared Thompson on The Wagner Group's Mounting Humanitarian Cost in Mali

Jared Thompson, Catrina Doxsee and Joseph Bermudez on Tracking the Arrival of Russia's Wagner Group in Mali

More on the Transnational Threats Project

Catrina Doxsee on twitter: @catrinadoxsee

Jessica Genauer on twitter: @jessicagenauer

More about the host: Jessica Genauer