
Dmitry Valerievich "Wagner" Utkin (11 June 1970-23 August 2023) was a Russian GRU lieutenant-colonel and the founder of the Wagner Group private military contractor.
Biography[]
Dmitry Utkin was born in Asbest, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union in 1970, and he was raised in Smoline, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. He joined the Russian GRU special forces in 1993 and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and he left the military in 2013 and founded the Wagner Group mercenary group a year later. Utkin named the group after his callsign "Wagner", which he adopted in honor of Adolf Hitler's favorite composer, Richard Wagner; Utkin was a neo-Nazi who bore multiple Nazi tattoos and adhered to Slavic neopaganism. Utkin's Wagner Group, backed by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, first came to the world's attention during the Crimean Crisis and Donbas War of 2014, and their profile was raised by their involvement in the Syrian Civil War. After 2015, Utkin went missing, and he became the subject of US sanctions in June 2017 and European Union sanctions in December 2021. On 23 August 2023, he, Prigozhin, and eight others were killed when their private jet crashed in Tver Oblast during a flight from Moscow to Saint Petersburg; a Wagner-associated Telegram channel claimed the jet was shot down by Russian air defenses.