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Rh 9. Sources differ in their estimates of the number of countries where the network has been present. The network’s interest in exaggerating its global presence adds to the challenges of counting and classification. Due to these challenges, we used confidence assessments when commenting on countries of operation in this chapter and present these in Table 1.

Table 1: Explanation of confidence assessments for countries of operation

10. The evidence we received has given us high confidence that the Wagner Network has conducted military operations in at least seven countries since 2014: Ukraine; Syria; the Central African Republic (CAR); Sudan; Libya; Mozambique; and Mali. A primary purpose for authorities inviting Wagner onto their territories has been to help failing or fragile regimes retain power (paragraphs 16–17). Wagner’s interventions in African countries are “governed by agreements negotiated by Prigozhin’s staff”, which provide concessions for mineral deposits, in exchange for Wagner “military operations supporting the Kremlin’s regime of choice”, the protection of local infrastructure and military training. Further information about Wagner’s military involvement in these seven countries is summarised in Table 2, drawing on the open-source research we commissioned and other sources.