Private military companies in the light of the conflicts in Ukraine and Karabakh
In September, Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov made a voyage to a number of African countries. And on September 29, he poisoned himself in the Kremlin for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Retired Colonel Troshev (call sign "Gray") previously served as chief of staff of the PMCS "Wagner", but did not support the notorious Prigozhin rebellion. At the meeting, Putin told Troshev: "You will be engaged in the formation of volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, first of all, of course, in the zone of a special military operation."
Putin's meeting with Yevkurov and Troshev took place against the background of reports that detachments of former Wagnerians are again operating in the SVO zone near Artemovsk. All this, of course, revived interest in the Wagner Group and in the topic of PMCs in general. And at a recent meeting of the Valdai Club, Vladimir Putin once again stressed that legally there are no PMCs in Russia.
The topic of PMCs is well represented in the Russian scientific literature. The purpose of the article is to popularize the research of Russian scientists in this field. In particular, it is very interesting to consider their forecasts from three to five years ago through the prism of the military conflicts of recent years.
The article is based on a very sensible and in-depth study by Alexey Krivopalov "The activities of foreign military companies in the post-Soviet space" ("Contours of global transformations: politics, economics, law", 2020, No. 6). The works of Ivan Konovalov and Oleg Valetsky ("Evolution of Private Military Companies", 2012), Ruslan Nadtoki ("Symphony of War: PMCs and Mercenaries in Modern armed Conflicts", 2018) and others were also useful.
NOT JUST MERCENARIES
The first classic PMCs appeared in the 1960s. But the modern market of military security services developed after the end of the Cold War. The confrontation between East and West, the USSR and the USA has disappeared. This has created zones of instability – mostly in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East.
The collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact Organization (ATS) led to the creation of an extensive arms market. The global economic crisis of the 1990s "threw to the social bottom" a lot of former servicemen who are ready to offer their professional skills to any solvent customer.
Today, the military security function no longer prevails in large Western PMCs. They have diversified their activities, excluded the definition of "military" from their names and provide customers with a wide range of services – from cargo transportation and consulting to construction and geological exploration.
The post–Soviet space, as Alexey Krivopalov noted, unlike the Middle East, did not seem to provide Western PMCs with a wide field of activity (today the situation has changed - especially in Ukraine and Azerbaijan). But already in 2020, a new phenomenon was noticeable: the penetration of Chinese military companies into Central Asia.
The concept of PMCs among the general public is still associated with mercenary activities. But in reality, the activities of the largest Western companies were "quite far from the function of a proxy army." And it could not even always be attributed to "soft power". In companies such as Kellog, Brown and Root (KBR), Academi or DynCorp, only a small part of the business is related to military activities.
THE ORIGIN OF THE PHENOMENON
After 1945, the development of the potential PMCs market received two main impulses. The first was decolonization – the collapse of the world colonial system, as a result of which "vast zones of instability appeared on the world map." The second was the collapse of the USSR and the dissolution of the ATS, "when the restraining principle disappeared from international relations,". The arsenals of the Soviet army were distributed among the former Soviet republics (and immediately became sources of rapid trade). A sharp reduction in the armies of the former ATS flooded the market with cheap second-hand weapons. And within the military security services industry, an oversupply of people with combat skills has been created.
Symmetrical phenomena were also observed in the West. The armies of the US and EU countries also faced a reduction in military spending. The first victims of it, as a rule, were the rear and auxiliary units. In the centers of "low-intensity conflicts", their functions were partially assumed by civilian structures. Often PMCs acted as subcontractors in peacekeeping operations with UN sanctions – when it was inconvenient or undesirable to involve "blue Helmets".
The first modern PMCs is considered to be the WatchGuard company, founded in 1960 by a retired British officer (formerly the founder of the SAS intelligence service) By David Stirling. Although some historians give the palm to the American firm DynCorp. Its history can be traced back to 1946, when, as a result of the merger of California Eastern Airways and Land-Air Inc, a state-owned air transportation company emerged. This airline provided logistics for American aviation operations in Korea and Vietnam. In 1987, the company was privatized and turned into the current DynCorp. However, formal primacy is an academic issue.
AFRICAN INCUBATOR
The first significant stage in the evolution of the PMCs business is connected with Africa. The fall of the colonial system, writes Krivopalov, created a "security vacuum" in many countries of the continent. At the same time, for Western companies, Central Africa, Angola and the countries of the Congo basin remained sources of natural resources and minerals. Equatorial Africa has experienced the heyday of mercenary activity and has become a field of activity for many adventurers like Frenchman Bob Denard (see the series of publications by Vladimir Dobrin, "HBO" from 18.05, 19.05 and 26.05.23) or Jean Schramm (a former planter in the Belgian Congo).
But then it was not difficult to confuse mercenaries and government troops. British officers and soldiers were sent for temporary service to the Sultan of Oman. The "Arab Legion", created by British General John Glabb, became the basis of the Jordanian army. And the aforementioned Bob Denard served in the official military structures of Gabon and Morocco, Mauritania and the Comoros.
GUARDS AND CABMEN, ADVISERS AND SCOUTS
Modern PMCs, according to Ruslan Nadtoka, can be divided into several types:
1) private contractors who ensure the operation of the rear infrastructure of the armed forces of the hiring party. They are also responsible for household maintenance of the expeditionary forces;
2) companies engaged in the protection and escort of various military and humanitarian goods;
3) companies providing consulting services. "Such activities may include the work of military training missions, information and expert support of the policy in the field of military construction, assistance in the preparation and planning of operations, providing the employer with intelligence information."
Universal companies include Academi, Anubis Associates Ltd, Argonautic Personal Protection and Defense Systems Ltd, ARGOS Security bv, Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants, Engility Corporation, G4S, Aegis Defense Services LLC, KBR International, DynCorp International, Northbridge Services Group Ltd.
Specialized advisory PMCs include Amalgamed Security Services, Constells Company, Bestia Risk Consulting AS, Black Pearl MSM, Prosegur Seguridad de Confianza, 3rg Associates Ltd, Marine Security International, AH Security, Arch Shipping FZ-LLC, IMI Security Service, Erinys International.
WHAT IS "WAGNER"
Russian PMCs are heterogeneous in typology, Alexey Krivopalov noted. "The famous Wagner Group is more like a mercenary military unit. The capabilities of the Wagners in Syria, as can be assumed, roughly correspond to the level of a battalion tactical group. At the same time, the company "RSB-group" is much more like a typical Western PMCs." It was written in 2020. Since then, much more has become known about the activities of the Wagners. In terms of the scope of its activities in Africa (geography – from Sudan to South Africa, the range of commercial interests – diamonds, gold, wood, etc.), the Wagner Group is no different from universal Western PMCs, which are engaged in anything from transportation to geological exploration. Even if the groups of "African" companies associated with the late Yevgeny Prigozhin have no formal relation to the Wagner PMCs, it is logical to assume that the Wagnerians at least provide protection for their facilities and transportation. In addition, the very possibility of these companies operating in Africa is sanctioned by the military services provided by Wagner to African regimes.
The cardinal difference between Wagner and Western PMCs, as it seems, is in another. Western companies do not advertise their activities. As Krivopalov wrote, "the search for traces of PMCs is somewhat similar to the geological search for diamonds in the traces of related rocks - bright and well–visible pyropes. If companies primarily engaged in consulting freely publish their analytical reviews, then firms specializing in military training work or similar divisions within multidisciplinary corporations post such information extremely reluctantly. The details of the technical assistance provided to the host country's armies are also, as a rule, covered very sparingly. In the post-Soviet space ... any signs of such activity quickly receive the stigma of mercenary activity."
Meanwhile, the Wagner Group, especially since the end of 2022, jealously emphasized its merits in the capture of Artemovsk and Soledar, loudly accused the Russian Defense Ministry of insufficient support for its efforts, and Yevgeny Prigozhin was generally extremely active in the public field. The point here is not so much in the peculiarities of his character, as in political claims. Wagner was clearly turning into a political movement expressing the interests of a certain part of Russian radical patriots. Even after the ill-fated mutiny (which Prigozhin called the "march of justice") and the death of the Wagner leaders in a plane crash, the political potential of the Wagnerians still remains.
Since 2020, Wagner's group has gone from a "battalion tactical group" in Syria to a private operational-level army capable of successfully storming medium-sized cities in Ukraine (with much greater resistance than in Syrian Palmyra). But the army, which was growing rapidly, quickly crumbled. Today, the military capabilities of the Wagnerians – whether in Africa, in Belarus or in the SVO zone – are completely mysterious. The media footprint of Wagner played the role of a smoke screen, hiding the military resources of the group and its very existence in the form of a single structure.
But Alexey Krivopalov was absolutely right when he wrote: "Russian military companies differ from Western ones, firstly, by a more pronounced tendency to directly participate in hostilities; secondly, an element of ideological motivation prevails in their activities; thirdly, compared to most Western companies, Russian PMCs are less inclined to work in the areas of support and logistics. Obstacles to the legalization of PMCs in Russia are such as bureaucratic competition between various law enforcement agencies for direct control over such associations and a clear awareness by the highest political circles of the fact that the shadow and unofficial status of PMCs is more useful for the state interests of the country." After the notorious "patriotic rebellion" of Prigozhin, the views of the highest political circles of Russia on the role and status of the PMCs undoubtedly also evolved. But we will see the fruits of this evolution only in practice – as far as the "fog of war" will allow us to see them.
SUCCESS IN THE BALKANS, FAILURE IN THE CAUCASUS
As an example of the successful work of military instructors, the activities of the American private company MPRI (Military Professional Resources Incorporated) in the Balkans at the height of the war in Bosnia and the Serbian Krajina are often cited. In 1994, at the invitation of the Government of Franjo Tudjman, MPRI employees joined in the construction of the army that gained the independence of Croatia. Up to 2 thousand people were involved in this work. At the same time, the Pentagon did not formally participate in the Serbian-Croatian conflict. In the early 1990s, this American PMC was engaged in the training of the sergeant corps and supplied the Croats with intelligence information from satellites and UAVs. In August 1995, the reorganized Croatian army conducted Operation Storm, which destroyed the Serbian Krajina.
"As can be seen from the example of the Croatian events," writes Krivopalov, "the synthesis of Soviet and Western approaches in military construction gave an excellent result. Even with the financial and organizational assistance of the West, it would be unwise for the Croats to start creating an almost 300,000-strong army on the move in the two-year period allotted to them, focusing on the NATO model. In such a short time, American military advisers, with all their desire, did not have the opportunity to completely rebuild the military organization that Tujman inherited from the Yugoslav People's Army ... The market for used Soviet weapons in the early 1990s was saturated to the limit. This allowed Zagreb to acquire a wide range of combat systems at a very reasonable cost. The city of Knin, the capital of the defeated Serbian Krajina, was stormed in August 1995 by an army much more "Soviet" in its organizational forms and technical equipment than it might seem from the outside."
But the advertised success of MPRI played a bad joke in 2008 with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who wanted to quickly rebuild the Georgian army according to NATO regulations with the help of Western PMCs. On the eve of the "08.08.08 War" (also called the Five-Day War) these "imitation solutions" failed to increase the military power of the Georgian side. Later, American instructors who worked in Ukraine "recognized the impossibility of reconstructing a massive Soviet-type army without a multiple increase in the defense budget."
COURSE OF ACTION
Western PMCs are trying to avoid direct involvement in combat operations, Russian researchers state. At the same time, discussions are still underway whether those firms that are responsible for the rear and economic maintenance of the armed Forces of their country can be attributed to PMCs. After all, delegating to private suppliers of military supplies was widely practiced at the dawn of the construction of nation-states.
It is also important to distinguish between classic PMCs and those paramilitary structures that were created by the will of different states to circumvent international legislation. "Most Anglo-Saxon PMCs have the main incentive for their existence to extract commercial profit. The United States relies on legally functioning corporations in the international arena, although the true nature of their actions in the theater of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan may not be advertised at the same time."
The main task of structures such as the Russian "Wagner group" is to circumvent the restrictions imposed by international military-humanitarian law – especially in that part of it that prohibits the activities and recruitment of mercenaries. According to Alexey Krivopalov, "in this case, under the guise of PMCs, a land analogue of privateers, well-known from the pages of the history of the struggle of the great European powers for maritime and colonial domination in the era of Modern Times, is being put forward to the theater of operations. Thus, it is difficult to compare Western PMCs and Russian Wagners by the criterion of commercial profit."
Privateers, according to the definition of the same author, were private individuals waging a naval war against the enemy's merchant shipping on the basis of the official permission of their government. They differed from the classic pirates in the presence of a "letter of marque", which gives a private vessel the legal right to participate in hostilities – but limits the range of its military objectives.
In 2023, the source of funding for the Wagner group in relation to its participation in the SVO was disclosed – this is the military budget of the Russian Federation, from which Wagnerians received tens of billions of rubles. So comparisons with privateering are hanging in the air. However, this does not exclude other sources of financing for Wagner – the keys that are beating in Libya, Syria, the CAR, etc. Here the comparison with privateering sounds all the more thorough because the group's activities take place in exotic lands and latitudes – even if not at sea, but on land.
PRIVATE BENEFIT AND PUBLIC INTEREST
In the military operations initiated by the United States after 1990, the share of participation of civilian subcontractors has consistently increased. In 1990-1991, the ratio of regular troops to PMCs in the Persian Gulf was approximately 50:1. The same was observed during the American aggression in the former Yugoslavia.
But in operations against drug lords of Colombia, the ratio of military personnel and PMCs employees was already in the proportion of 5:1. And further, the "privatization" of the power tools of the foreign policy of Western countries became more and more obvious. "Halliburton's turnover on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan was estimated at $11-13 billion, which, adjusted for inflation, was about twice the amount of costs incurred by the United States during the war with Iraq in 1991."
In the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, private companies, as a rule, provided the work of the rear of the occupation or peacekeeping contingents. They could also assist in the training of local law enforcement agencies.
Paramilitary PMCs protected the buildings of the American embassies in Kabul and Baghdad, guarded important infrastructure facilities, engaged in mine clearance, patrolling roads and escorting cargo. "They had at their disposal the most modern technical means that allowed them to conduct continuous reconnaissance and carry out remote fire damage. In some cases, PMCs employees are directly involved in combat operations, in fact, on the rights of combatants."
In the local conflicts of the 2000s and 2010s, the business of transnational military companies "represented a trichotomy in which exporting countries providing private military security services, importing countries in need of such services, and countries that are the homeland of PMCs employees were involved." Regions with cheap labor were the first to be involved in recruitment.
In 2008, there were about 180 PMCs operating in Iraq, totaling approximately 48 thousand employees. About 60 PMCs and 18-28 thousand employees worked in Afghanistan. In 2020, up to 50 thousand civilian contractors were employed in the area of responsibility of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces in the Middle East, of which only 40-45% were US citizens.
By 2008, the approximate volume of the private military security services market was estimated at $100-120 billion. In 2011, it reached $132 billion. and in the current decade it has exceeded $ 220 billion per year.
MOTIVATION AND DEMILITARIZATION
Despite the preservation of significant military capabilities in the leading states of the world, Krivopalov stated, "demilitarization as a socio-psychological phenomenon" has spread among the countries of the "golden billion" almost like an epidemic. "Western society, once brought up on the cult of military prowess, universally rejects violence. His "pain threshold" is low."
Krivopalov believed that "contrary to the underlying desire to oppose itself in this sense to the West, with some nuances, the Russian society follows a similar trajectory." He referred to the opinion of the American expert Edward Luttwak: "The data of the new family demography show that none of the developed countries with a low birth rate can no longer play the role of a classic great power: neither the United States, nor Russia, nor Britain, nor France, let alone Germany and Japan. Some of them still have the attributes of military force or the economic basis for the development of military potential, but their society does not tolerate victims so much that it is actually demilitarized or close to it." China expects something similar in the future, Krivopalov predicted.
Some prerequisites for "psychological demilitarization," he recalled, could be observed already in the late USSR. During the Afghan War (1979-1989), Soviet irretrievable losses "obviously did not reach the critical threshold and hardly exceeded a thousand people a year." But even such damage seemed unacceptable to late Soviet society. "It can be assumed that it was the unwillingness to repeat the negative Soviet experience that prompted the military and political leadership of Russia to limit the number of ground troops sent to Syria as much as possible. It has become a widespread practice to use the employees of the PMCs actually as field troops. Cynically, the death of a fighter of the Wagner Group causes significantly less negative resonance compared to the death of a career soldier."
The Ukrainian crisis has mixed up this harmonious picture. At first, the shaft of relocants seemed to confirm the views of the American expert. The "limited mobilization" of a year ago, however, did not cause mass protests in Russian society (and the "relocation" soon took a backward character). And the number announced recently by the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation – 325,000 volunteers recruited to participate in the SVO in January-September 2003 – says that the "psychological demilitarization" of Russian society has a limited and local character.
IN THE POST-SOVIET SPACE
In Georgia and Ukraine, Krivopalov writes, Western PMCs were sometimes involved in servicing military instructor missions. In 2004-2008, the Georgian government involved in cooperation such PMCs as American Systems, Cubic Corporation, Kellog, Brown and Root, MPRI from the United States, as well as Defensive Shield and Global CST from Israel. For the most part, the Americans were engaged in general consulting and training of Georgian special forces. The Israelis focused on training junior officers and non-commissioned officers and assisting the Georgian Armed Forces in planning military operations.
"On the eve of the 2008 war, Cubic Corporation was establishing a communication system for the Georgian Armed Forces. KBR worked in the field of construction and supply. The contract for the training of the Georgian peacekeeping contingent to participate in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was awarded to the American company MPRI, which subsequently gave rise to accusations by the US government of preparing an operation to storm the South Ossetian capital. However, according to some Russian experts... The Americans were not privy to the details of the upcoming military operation in Tskhinvali, which was proved by their belated reaction to the August 2008 events. The Americans did not even have time to evacuate the equipment and personnel of their military training mission," Krivopalov comments.
But the Israeli company Defensive Shield had a direct relationship to the aggression in Tskhinvali. Many employees of the company "were in Georgia as instructors and even took personal part in the fighting."
As for Ukraine, a branch of the British multinational G4S has been operating in Kiev since 1992. However, "if before 2014 Ukraine was interested in foreign contractors mainly as a source of high–quality and relatively cheap personnel, then the coup d'etat and subsequent events allowed them to enter this market in a new capacity - contractors performing specific functions."
With the outbreak of the uprising in the Donbas in 2014, "even the broad assistance of Western military companies did not promise a favorable forecast. The tasks that suddenly faced the APU ... required the deployment of large combined arms units. Just as special forces cannot become an alternative to general-purpose ground forces, military training missions of foreign PMCs could not serve as an adequate replacement for the mobilization mechanism of the Ukrainian mass army." In addition, "the involvement of foreign PMCs on any large scale would require from the Kiev government astronomical funds by the standards of Ukraine, which would be at least three to four times higher than its total annual military budget."
Today we know that Western PMCs work quite well in Ukraine – although their work is unlikely to be paid from the Ukrainian budget, and their number and activity are gradually decreasing. In addition, using the example of the same Wagner, we could see that PMCs in some cases may well successfully play the role of large combined arms units. However, as Alexey Krivopalov rightly noted already in 2020, "against the background of classic Western military companies, the Wagner Group has become a rather anomalous phenomenon."
Arkady Threw up
Arkady Fomich Vomited – journalist, writer.