The privatization of the military apparatus is not new in the field of international conflicts, nor does it surprise academics in the area who have been focusing on the subject at least since the Iraq War (2003-2011). But the practice that appears to have led to the clashes in Eastern Europe is worrying because of the potential it has to escalate humanitarian violations — which have already been recorded in droves.
UK intelligence and the US Department of Defense said in late March that they had information that at least 1,000 men from the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company that many describe as mercenary, began operating in the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin did not respond, but if it did, it was expected to reject the information — Vladimir Putin’s government denies it has any ties to Wagner.
The group is part of what the professor of international relations at PUC-Rio Márcio Scalercio describes as “privatization of the use of force”. That is, companies whose factory floor is mostly formed by ex-military, hired to provide security services (such as protecting mineral or oil installations) or operational support in armed conflicts.
“It’s not a Russian invention,” he says. “But the Wagner Group has acted in line with the interests of the Moscow government, as in Syria and Libya; it is a way of projecting power without taking risks or compromising the government, but it greatly increases the risk of abuses and violations, because the soldiers are not on military service, but answering to the companies they work for.”
There is also the gray area over which private military companies and mercenarism in international law stand. Analysts fear that as Moscow repeatedly denies ties to Wagner, potential war crimes will be even more difficult to prosecute.
What is Russia’s record with these groups?
Private military companies began to flourish in Russia in the late 1980s, amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War and the financial crisis, the government reduced active military forces, which relegated thousands of veterans with broad experience available for contracting.
“These men are not just private workers or mercenaries looking for money,” says Candace Rondeaux, director of the Future Frontlines program at the American think tank New America, and a member of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies, at the most recent study on the subject.
“They are motivated both by the revival of Russian nationalism and by their own economic and social dislocation in society.” And the contingent that forms groups like Wagner is not quite fixed — it is common for men to be hired for specific services and then dismissed. They are banned from talking about it, as are their families.
In theory, the Russian Penal Code prohibits the use of mercenaries, which helps the Kremlin publicly distance itself from any illegal actions committed by Russian private military companies.
But Rondeaux says these groups have been instrumental in the proxy war strategy, that is, in bolstering Moscow’s interests elsewhere, notably the Middle East and Africa, where the government supports more militarily and politically fragile nations to achieve its goals. goals.
It is documented that Wagner has operated in Syria, where the government of Vladimir Putin supports the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, and in Libya, aligned with rebel leader Khalifa Haftar. Also in African countries such as Mali, Mozambique and the Central African Republic. In the latter, last year’s UN report reported that Russian armed groups aided the government in cases of excessive use of force, killings of civilians, occupation of schools and large-scale looting.
What is the Wagner Group’s previous role in Ukraine?
The group has been active in Ukraine since 2014 in Donbass, where the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are located — the same region where the UK and US now say 1,000 more men have been sent. The case locally known as Wagnergate, from July 2020, well symbolizes the weight that the group’s performance had in the eastern part of the country.
At that time, after months of investigation, Ukrainian intelligence services put in place a plan that aimed to co-opt Wagner’s ex-soldiers and get them to re-enter the country’s territory so that they could be arrested under national law for the acts committed there. . But the action went awry, as an extensive investigation by journalistic website Bellingcat has shown.
Impersonating Russian mercenaries, intelligence men co-opted at least 33 ex-Wagner agents living in Russia, inviting them to work to protect oil facilities in Venezuela. They would have to go to Belarus and then take a flight to Caracas. The idea was that this flight, which for half an hour would fly over the territory of Ukraine, would have to make an emergency landing on the outskirts of Kiev – when, then, the mercenaries would be arrested.
But logistical problems meant the men stayed longer in Belarus. Dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko’s country was in the midst of presidential elections and massive street protests. Former Wagner agents were arrested by Belarusian police, and Lukashenko, even though he is one of Moscow’s main allies, went so far as to say that the men were sent by Putin to destabilize the country.
After lengthy diplomatic negotiations, in which Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for the men’s extradition so that they could be tried and Putin made a similar move, Lukashenko decided to send them back to Russia.
What has been the international response?
The European Union imposed sanctions in December on eight people and three companies connected to the Wagner Group, causing their assets in EU countries to be frozen and banning travel to the region. The EU claims to have information that Russian businessman Yevgueni Prigojin, a food magnate and close Putin ally, is behind the group’s funding.
Analysis by independent institutes, such as London’s Tech Against Terrorism, suggest that Wagner members are directly connected to far-right organizations – an element that, in a way, gives it something in common with the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian militia formed in response to the movement. Russian separatist in Donbass and which was, in part, merged into the Armed Forces.
What does international law provide?
In theory, the performance of private military companies and mercenaries is restricted or viewed with extreme caution under international humanitarian law, but this assessment comes up against a tangle of rules that vary significantly from country to country.
The United Nations Mercenary Convention of 2001, ratified by just over 40 nations, prevents the recruitment, training, use and financing of mercenaries, but does not go so far as to detail the ban on the use of private military companies by sovereign states.
The Montreux Document, created in 2008 on the initiative of Switzerland and the Red Cross, reaffirms the obligation of States to ensure that private military companies operating in armed conflicts comply with the rules of international law, as well as ensuring that companies can be prosecuted when —what if—violations such as war crimes occur.
The document was ratified by 58 countries and three organizations, such as the European Union and NATO, the western military alliance – Ukraine also signed the commitments. Russia, however, is not a signatory to any international treaty that prohibits the privatization of the use of force in wars.
