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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| The Soviet Origins of Putin’s Mercenaries |
| 2022-12-03 |
| From 18 months ago, prewar [NewLinesMag] Methods perfected during the occupation of Afghanistan are now in wide use among Russia’s corporate guns for hire by Ruslan Trad In February 2018, people in the Russian town of Asbest were surprised to learn that several of their fellow citizens had died in Khasham, eastern Syria, 4,000 kilometers (2,489 miles) from home. When Maxim Borodin, the star reporter from the newspaper Novy Den (New Day), arrived in Asbest, the deaths were still shrouded in mystery. Asbest, in the Sverdlovsk region, is known mainly for its asbestos factories, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, the population in this industrial hamlet was hit hard. Residents lost their jobs, and to feed their families they increasingly turned to employment opportunities in private security for individuals and companies, a sector that has grown since the early 1990s, thanks to the associated risks of doing business in Russia’s nascent market economy. Borodin was determined to find out what the men were doing in Syria and how they had died. He interviewed relatives and the commanders of the deceased and attended their secret funerals. His resulting article provoked a national scandal and drew attention to a topic the Russian government had wanted to keep quiet: the use of private military companies (PMCs) to serve the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives and secure and protect the business interests of the kleptocrats in charge of Russia’s most lucrative resources. The article would be Borodin’s last. On April 12, 2018, Borodin was found seriously injured and in a coma in his hometown of Yekaterinburg. Police say Borodin “fell” from his balcony while smoking. The day before, he had contacted a friend and told him that he’d spotted armed men in camouflage near his apartment. Three days later, he was dead. Through his investigation in Asbest, Borodin discovered that the dead had joined a mercenary force known as the Wagner Group, a PMC created in 2014 and financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and catering magnate close to President Vladimir Putin. While PMCs are technically illegal, private security companies are not. PMCs like the Wagner Group adopt the façade of a security company, but at the same time they have clear ties to Russian intelligence agencies such as the FSB (national security services) and GRU (military intelligence) and to both the Russian special forces and the army. In making the connection between the deaths of Russian civilians in Syria and their work with the Wagner Group, Borodin uncovered a tangled web of state, business, and security interests that are primarily concerned with preserving their influence and power. There are a number of PMCs in Russia, but the Wagner Group typifies the way global business and geopolitics operate in Putin’s Russia. Mercenaries who work for companies like the Wagner Group provide security to sites (such as mines and oil fields) that are of strategic interest to the Kremlin and its kleptocrats. PMCs also perform such functions on behalf of foreign governments, and in this way, they have become an important tool for the Kremlin to promote its foreign policy objectives. For each of the key parties involved — the Kremlin, foreign governments, state industries, and private business interests — PMCs not only offer lucrative opportunities but, due to their quasi-legal structure, also provide plausible deniability for their clandestine activities. The origins of the Wagner Group can be traced back to the Soviet period and evolved out of several decades of military adventurism, particularly during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970s but also during the wars in Chechnya in the early 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, veterans of these wars have been hired as commanders and advisers to the Wagner Group. For example, Wagner’s main commander, Dmitry Utkin, is a former colonel and commander of the GRU and a veteran of the Chechen wars. As the recipient of four Orders of Courage, Utkin was an official guest in the Kremlin for the Day of Heroes of the Fatherland on Dec. 9, 2016, where he posed for photos next to Putin. Utkin also has ties with Prigozhin. In 2014, Utkin fought with fighters from the Wagner Group in Luhansk, and in 2017 Utkin became director of Concord Management and Consulting LLC — a subsidiary of Prigozhin’s Concord Catering company, which secured a substantial state contract to deliver food to the regular Russian army. The Wagner Group also employs tactics that were developed during the Afghan war. The Soviet army used so-called Muslim Battalions, special units made up of Muslims from Central Asia whose main task was to carry out covert operations disguised as locals. In the spring of 1979, Moscow sent eight Mi-8 helicopters, a signal center, and an An-12 aircraft to transport a paratrooper battalion to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Although the military personnel were Soviet, the markings on the helicopters were Afghan, and the crew, including the paratroopers, wore the insignia of the Afghan army. This technique bears an uncanny resemblance to that used by the so-called Little Green Men — the soldiers who appeared without insignias in Crimea in February 2014 and helped Russia annex the territory. According to Maj. Yuri Kozlov, who was monitoring the Soviet unit on behalf of the GRU, the Muslim Battalion was the first of its kind among the Spetsnaz (special forces). For three months, under the command of Maj. Habib Halbaev, the battalion members trained for special operations, intercepted enemy communications, captured airports, held mountain passes, and engaged in urban battles. In the 1990s, the military and political elite deployed Muslim Battalions to Chechnya and “volunteer detachments” to the Balkans to fight on the side of the Serbs. And once the marriage of the old guard with the new economic elite was consummated in the person of Vladimir Putin, the lessons of Afghanistan and Chechnya combined to produce Russia’s private mercenary industry. Read the rest at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #7 that scenario is unacceptable inside the Beltway Well, by certain parties... DC gun violence higher in 2022 than at this point last year |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2022-12-03 12:22 |
| #6 Killing is the sine qua non of war. If we here in the West still had the determination to do it with moral clarity, our wars would be short and always successful. Soon, nobody would even try us. Needless to say, that scenario is unacceptable inside the Beltway. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-12-03 10:43 |
| #5 Maybe it's those methods being used in Ukraine. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2022-12-03 10:31 |
| #4 Methods perfected during the occupation of Afghanistan I don't think anything was perfected by anybody. Except getting ass raped by brainless pashtuns and reporting it as a huge success. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2022-12-03 10:29 |
| #3 Tell the guy who gave up Bin Laden how well helping the US out for a reward works out. |
| Posted by: Chris 2022-12-03 10:24 |
| #2 $250,000. dollar FBI reward leading to the arrest of a Democrat ? Unheard of. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-12-03 08:57 |
| #1 Alias: “Yevgeny” Birth: June 1, 1961 Place of Birth: Russia. Facial: [sinister] REWARD: The FBI is offering a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to the arrest of Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin. REMARKS: Prigozhin speaks Russian and has ties to Russia, Indonesia, and Qatar. CAUTION: Prigozhin is wanted by FBI for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to defraud the USA by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the US Department of Justice, and the Department of State. This occurred in Washington, D.C., from early 2014 to February 16, 2018. |
| Posted by: Slavising Unineting5672 2022-12-03 08:50 |