The Assassin Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

The Wagner Group also known as ChVK Wagner (ChVK being the Russian abbreviation for Private Military Company) is a Russian private military company or private military contracting agency. Its forces are trained on MoD installations. Its contractors have reportedly taken part in various conflicts, including operations in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Syrian government, as well as in the war in Donbas in Ukraine aiding the separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics from 2014 to 2015. Reports in The New York Times consider ChVK Wagner an arms-length unit of the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the GRU (the Russian Intelligence Agency established in place of KGB after the collapse of USSR) in disguise, which is used by the Russian government in conflicts where deniability is called for. The Wagner Group is believed to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, (known as Putin's Chef) a businessman with close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It has been accused of war crimes in areas where it was deployed. The founder of the company is reported to be Dmitriy Valeryevich Utkin, a veteran of the First and Second Chechen War. He retired as a lieutenant colonel and brigade commander of a Special Forces of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces unit of Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) .