Prosecuting Putin’s Proxies: How Prosecutions Are Reshaping the Fight Against Russian Irregular Forces
The grainy video showed a man in civilian clothes being escorted through Helsinki Airport by Finnish security officers. To the casual observer, it might have seemed like just another security check. But the arrest in July 2023 of Jan Petrovsky, a commander of the notorious Russian paramilitary unit DShRG Rusich, represents something far more significant: the emergence of criminal prosecution as a powerful weapon against Russian irregular warfare operations. Now nearly two years on, Petrovsky, a Russian citizen, is now potentially facing years in prison for war crimes charges in a historic trial set to unfold in the Finnish capital in the coming months.
The prosecution of Jan Petrovsky in Finland marks a watershed moment in the pursuit of justice for Russian paramilitary atrocities in Ukraine. As a commander of the St. Petersburg- based Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group (DShRG) Rusich, a Wagner-affiliated unit, Petrovsky faces atrocity allegations connected to a brutal 2014 ambush of Ukrainian forces near Metallist in the Donbas region. What sets this case apart is its temporal scope – reaching back to alleged war crimes that predate Russia’s 2022 invasion, making it unique among Wagner-related prosecutions.
Announcement of the charges against Petrovsky in late October 2024, who also once held Norwegian citizenship, captured headlines in Finland and other parts of Scandinavia. Petrovsky is by no means the first Wagner Group linked operative to face formal war crimes charges–that distinction belongs to three others charged in Ukraine early after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022–but he is by far one of the most prominent paramilitary leaders to be detained.
The capture of one of Russia’s most prominent far-right militants came down to a moment of routine border screening at a Finnish airport. As Petrovsky and his fiancée attempted to depart for the French Riviera, advanced facial recognition technology pierced through his alias of “Voislav Torden,” leading to his arrest by Finnish Border Guards. The timing was particularly significant, following the U.S. Treasury Department’s designation of both Petrovsky and his Rusich co-founder Alexey Milchakov in September 2022 as sanctions targets – a designation that highlighted their reputation for “special cruelty” during the initial phase of Russia’s 2022 offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
The international legal landscape began shifting dramatically in the spring of 2023, just as Wagner’s operations were reaching their apex in Ukraine. While Prigozhin’s death initially created uncertainty about Wagner’s command structure, it also triggered an unprecedented cascade of intelligence leaks and defections that would prove invaluable to prosecutors.
Beyond establishing potential criminal liability for both individual commanders and possibly Russian officials, the Petrovsky case in Finland exemplifies an intriguing game changer: the growing role of national courts applying universal jurisdiction principles to prosecute war crimes, rather than relying on specialized international tribunals. This approach may prove particularly crucial given current geopolitical uncertainties surrounding traditional international justice mechanisms. Finland’s handling of this prosecution could help establish new legal precedents for holding members of Russian paramilitary organizations like Rusich, Wagner and other affiliates accountable for atrocities in Ukraine. A conviction in Petrovsky’s case could serve as a potent deterrent to other authoritarian regimes considering replicating the Wagner Group model.
The Evolution of Legal Accountability
For years, Western military planners and intelligence agencies have grappled with the challenge of Russian proxy forces operating in the gray zone between peace and war. These forces – from the Wagner Group to its successor, the Africa Corps – have provided Moscow with plausible deniability while advancing its interests through violence and resource extraction across multiple continents.
From the start of Russia’s initial incursion in Crimea in 2014, the Wagner Group functioned as its CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin’s masterwork of hybrid warfare: part psychological operation, part strategic deception, and part deniable proxy force for the Kremlin’s covert missions and state-sponsored criminal enterprises. From its founding, the paramilitary organization was deliberately structured to resist clear classification and frustrate Western intelligence and law enforcement efforts.
Despite (or perhaps because) its murky legal status under Russian and international law Wagner has become synonymous with Russia’s global military adventures. While the Wagner Group is far from the only Kremlin-approved Russian military-security contractor operating abroad, Prigozhin’s operatives have taken on an increasingly prominent role in shaping Russia’s foreign policy. Beyond Ukraine, Russian expeditionary forces billed as “private military company” forces have worked under contract through military-technical cooperation agreements between Russia and dictatorships around the world, including Syria, Sudan, Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic.
In response, the United States and European Union repeatedly sanctioned the Wagner Group and Prigozhin, but to little effect. The Wagner Group–now operating primarily under the umbrella of the so-called Africa Corps and training Russian allied special forces in Belarus– continues to operate with impunity because many policymakers fail to recognize that it is private in name only, and that Prigozhin’s greatest achievement was transforming the Wagner Group into a globally recognized brand for the new Russian way of war.
Before his death in an August 2023 plane crash – just months after leading a failed mutiny against Vladimir Putin – Prigozhin had skillfully leveraged his wealth and Kremlin connections to build the Wagner brand while manipulating policymakers, journalists, and humanitarian workers with conflicting narratives about the organization’s nature and purpose. This sophisticated manipulation helped obscure the identities of those who truly financed and benefited from Russia’s military adventures and war profiteering.
During Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Wagner Group demonstrated its continued value as a military diversion, famously engaging Ukrainian forces in costly battles in Bakhmut and elsewhere that drained resources and attention. Prigozhin’s death, following his brief rebellion against Putin, left questions about Wagner’s future role – though the organization’s utility as an instrument of Russian power projection had been firmly established.
But the game is changing. A growing body of evidence, including leaked Wagner Group records documenting over 13,000 personnel files, 127 bases and 44 mining operations across five countries, is making it increasingly difficult for Russia to maintain this facade of separation. More importantly, it’s providing new tools to disrupt these operations.
From Battlefield to Courtroom: A New Front Opens
The footage from September 2014 shows the aftermath of an ambush near Metallist, a small town in eastern Ukraine. Twenty-two Ukrainian soldiers from the Aidar Battalion lay dead, some bearing signs of mutilation. Behind the camera stood Petrovsky and his co-commander Milchakov. Posted and reposted countless times across Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, the grisly scene would make Rusich notorious for its brutality.
Nearly a decade later, this footage became crucial evidence in a Finnish courtroom. Petrovsky’s arrest came months after he took over as top commander for Rusich operations in Ukraine after Milchakov was injured during fighting near Kharkiv within weeks of the opening of the Russian offensive in 2022.
Petrovsky and Milchakov’s path to becoming paramilitary commanders began at the “Partizan” training program run by the Russian Imperial Legion – the fighting arm of the U.S.-sanctioned Russian Imperial Movement (RIM). Their unit, Rusich, would go on to operate alongside Wagner forces in both Ukraine and Syria, where they were implicated in further atrocities, including the filmed beheading of Syrian nationals in 2017.
The Finnish prosecution represents more than just one case against one commander. It’s testing the limits of universal jurisdiction and creating a template for future prosecutions. While Milchakov remains at large, reportedly active near Russia’s border with Finland, the evidence gathered against Petrovsky could help establish precedents for command responsibility in paramilitary operations.
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 International Criminal Court. In prosecuting paramilitary war crimes, it may be difficult to meet the high standard necessary to prove state responsibility, but paramilitary members may bear individual criminal liability for atrocity crimes. Under universal jurisdiction, a country can prosecute the perpetrators of war crimes—regardless of where the crimes were committed or the nationalities of the people involved.
Of course, political support and public sympathy for Ukraine, as well as financial resources, will be necessary to carry out and complete the significant investment of time, money, and effort to investigate, prosecute, and try war crimes. Litigation strategies will need to consider legal procedures that vary by country, including laws concerning trial in absentia, immunity for state officials, rules pertaining to sexual and gender-based crimes, and penal sanctions for war crimes.
But, encouragingly, a recently published study led by the War Crimes Research Office at American University on pursuing accountability for Russia’s irregular forces, found that six countries are arguably most conducive for prosecuting atrocity crimes in Ukraine: Germany, Sweden, France, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway.
The Command Structure Vulnerability
The transformation of Wagner into the Africa Corps came at a pivotal moment. In June 2023, just days after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted march on Moscow, Vladimir Putin made an extraordinary admission: “the maintenance of the entire Wagner Group was fully provided for by the state.” He revealed that Russia’s Ministry of Defense had invested nearly $1 billion in Wagner operations from May 2022 to May 2023 alone.
This admission, followed by the mysterious plane crash that killed Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin, and Wagner’s chief of logistics Valery Chekalov in August 2023, marked a turning point. The Kremlin moved to assert direct control over its irregular warfare capabilities, but in doing so, it also created clearer lines of legal liability.
The evidence trail is damning. Leaked records reviewed and analyzed by New America’s Future Frontlines program reveal that Russian authorities issued false identity documents to over 5,800 Wagner fighters between 2014 and 2021. The group’s personnel included everything from tank drivers to anti-aircraft specialists, indicating deep integration with Russia’s military cooperation system. Their operations were coordinated through Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-controlled arms export agency, creating a documented chain of command that leads directly to Moscow.
The Petrovsky Precedent: Legal Accountability’s Impact on Russian Irregular Warfare Operations
In Finland’s Vantaa prison, where progressive rehabilitation programs stand in stark contrast to the brutality of his alleged crimes, Petrovsky’s presence represents more than just another war crimes case. His prosecution offers military planners a roadmap for gaining insight into Russian irregular warfare capabilities through an unconventional vector: the courtroom.
Consider how the evidence gathering for Petrovsky’s prosecution has already yielded operational intelligence. Investigators piecing together his journey from the “Partizan” training program to Rusich commander have mapped out critical nodes in Russia’s irregular warfare network. The documentation of Rusich’s operations at Russian government-owned training sites near St. Petersburg and Pskov has exposed previously obscured military infrastructure. Even the facial recognition hit that led to his arrest demonstrates how law enforcement tools can be weaponized against Russian irregular forces.
The prosecution’s evidence collection has revealed another crucial vulnerability: the paper trail created by state support. When Russian authorities issued false identity documents to thousands of fighters, they created an exploitable administrative network. Each passport, each training record, each payment voucher becomes a potential target for intelligence collection and legal leverage.
The convergence of legal proceedings against Russian paramilitary forces with military operations presents both opportunities and limitations. While military planners and intelligence agencies must maintain strict separation from prosecutorial functions, they can observe how legal accountability measures affect the operational environment for Russian irregular warfare.
Three key developments warrant attention. The exposure of command structures through legal proceedings, as exemplified by GRU deputy General Vladimir Alekseeyev’s recorded statements about Wagner operations in 2014-2015, provides valuable open-source intelligence about Russian military relationships with proxy forces. Similarly, the documented transformation of Wagner into the Africa Corps, along with Putin’s public acknowledgment of state funding for Wagner operations, offers insights into how Russian irregular forces adapt and sustain operational tempo.
The expanding scope of prosecutions across Europe – from Petrovsky’s case in Finland to investigations in Poland, Norway, and other jurisdictions – is changing the risk calculations for Russian paramilitary operations. When commanders face potential arrest in EU territory and financial institutions face increased scrutiny of Wagner-linked transactions, their freedom of movement and resource access become constrained.
Military planners and defense and intelligence leaders can observe these effects while maintaining appropriate distance from legal proceedings. They can analyze how legal accountability measures alter the operational environment, assess changes in Russian irregular forces’ behavior, and adjust their own strategic planning accordingly. However, they must be careful not to blur the lines between military operations and law enforcement or judicial functions.
The evolution of legal accountability measures against Russian irregular forces marks a significant shift in the character of modern conflict. While Petrovsky’s prosecution unfolds in Finland, its implications reverberate far beyond Helsinki’s courtrooms. As national courts increasingly apply universal jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes, Russian paramilitary commanders are learning a harsh lesson: in the age of digital evidence and international justice, there are no more shadows deep enough to hide the dogs of war.
