translator: i m a mercenary and 90% of participants of the company were like me, and they were motivated by money. reporter: what sort of training was it? where did it take place? translator: you know, i didn t have any training as such, not then, anyway. i spent six days in the training camp. i went to a firing range twice and shot a machine gun once. that was it. reporter: cnn traveled to the remote russian village to try get to wagner s training camp and found the group has a surprisingly close relationship with the russian military. the only way to get into the wagner barracks is to get through that checkpoint which is manned by the russian military because this actually belongs to a russian special forces unit. not far from here, there s a monument to fallen wagner fighters. visitors are not welcome, so we approach with a hidden camera.
it looks less like a memorial than a fortress. a guard soon comes up to us. is the church only for wagne? i ask. i don t know for whom he says. for the people who are in syria? i press him. i don t know, i m telling you he said, i m just guarding here. he beg he begins to get suspicious of our questions and we leave. let s go. reporter: they didn t let us inside which is not surprising because in that compound is the only tangible, visible proof, that wagner is real. wagner is funded by a progoshin-backed company. mysterious, unidentified fighters, dubbed little green
instrument for resolving issues by force. when action has to be taken immediately. urgently. and in the most concealed way possible. i cannot say it s an army in the proper sense of that word. it s just a fighting unit that will do anything that putin says. reporter: this is the first time a former wagner employee has agreed to speak on camera and oleg asked us to disguise his identity. private military contractors are illegal in russia. officially, wagner doesn t exist, but cnn has discovered that the group now has hundreds of fighters operating on three different continents, and this is the man believed to be behind that expansion. dubbed putin s chef because of lucrative catering contracts with the kremlin, yvgeny pregoshin is sanctioned by the u.s. for funding the internet research agency accused of meddling in the 2016 election.