Wagner Inc: a Russian warlord and his lawyers

In April 2020 a cargo flight took off from Zhukovsky airport outside Moscow heading towards Khartoum. According to the documentation, the aircraft was carrying 28,000 kilos of Russian gingerbread cookies being flown to the Sudanese capital by an obscure company registered in St Petersburg called RN Trading.

At the time, the flight passed largely unnoticed. In fact, the cargo — which weighed almost as much as 12 Range Rovers — was sent on behalf of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-backed catering entrepreneur who has transformed himself from an ex-convict into the founder of a private mercenary operation that offers muscle to dictators around the world.