The Wagner Mercenary Group (opens in new tab) is notoriously like Russia's Blackwater (opens in new tab). This mercenary group was founded by Evgeny Prigogine, a food and beverage business owner, oligarch, and Putin ally. It operates in Syria, Africa, and Ukraine (many of its fighters are drawn from Russian prisons). In short, it is not the kind of facility that would host a stream of video games.

In last weekend's VKontakte stream (opens in new tab), a Russian streamer calling himself GrishaPutin played a four-hour multiplayer match of Hearts of Iron 4 from the Wagner Group building in St. Petersburg. He was playing. Dressed in full military uniform in a curiously empty Wagner office, Streamer (who said he was 16 years old) was essentially playing World War III with more than 20 other online players. The game had been modified to be set in modern times, and instead of HoI4's traditional Axis and Allied heads of state, yes, there stood leaders like Vladimir Putin.

It was a puzzling sight, and after first seeing the story on Reddit (opens in new tab), I was convinced that Grisha Putin must have planted some sort of green screen to emulate the appearance of the Wagner headquarters behind him. But it appears to be real: the streamer repeatedly grabs the webcam, showing other parts of the office, moving into the background to hang the military uniform at the end, and reflecting in the glass behind him throughout.

In the portion of the stream I watched, Grisha Putin didn't say much about how he came to stream a grand strategy game from the headquarters of the world's most notorious paramilitary organization, but that's not too hard to summarize. There's a specific shout-out to Anna Zamalaeva, Wagner's "curator in charge of working with the media and bloggers," and the Russian news organization Ostorozhno, Novosti reported (opens in new tab) that Grisha Putin's mother decided that he would go on his own and said, "Cool. Let's do that."

That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. GrishaPutin, who played with some fairly popular Western streamers before Russia invaded Ukraine (they have since disavowed him (open in new tab)), claims to be a member of the youth wing of United Russia (the country's governing party). And his past streams and videos form for a grand display of patriotism.

His past videos include several videos of him in period-appropriate Soviet military uniforms to commemorate anniversaries of important events in Russian history, and several old HoI4 videos of him cosplaying whatever side he is playing in the game. teenage patchwork ideology. I'm not interested in deconstructing it, but I'm a bit puzzled by the (open in new tab) video celebrating Vladimir Lenin's 152nd birthday, in which Vladimir Putin accused him of "cutting off and severing what historically is Russian land" and creating an independent Ukraine. Putin's online persona reflects an incredibly confused mishmash of ideologies as well as nostalgia for the international communist project by residents of a right-wing, reactionary state.

Upon learning of this stream, some of Paradox's staff tried to track down where it was hosted (open in new tab). However, they could do nothing because GrisaPutin had already been banned from Twitch and was streaming on the Russian social network VKontakte.

We contacted Paradox for comment on the incident.

As a stream, the whole thing quickly culminated in a nuclear strike and ultimately ended in peace negotiations with "Donald Trump" played by the Russians and members of the other team. Somehow, the point of the exercise did not seem to be to demonstrate the destructive futility of war that must always end in negotiations. Instead, the entire exercise was conducted in a borderline nihilistic spirit of defiance, a kind of "we don't care what you think of us" nonchalance.

Since the stream did not record surprising numbers (only 12,000 views at the time of writing), it would be surprising if the Wagner Group used Grisha Putin as a new tool of propaganda for the war in Ukraine. Still, this is a perverse showcase of 21st century modern warfare, the kind of thing that will be cut out and featured in a future Adam Curtis documentary. Given that the Western military-industrial complex has already extended its tentacles to games like "Call of Duty" (opens in new tab) and plans for streaming (opens in new tab), videos like this feel like a harbinger of things to come.