Wagner Group, Russian PMCs & Ukraine – History, motives & privatised warfare

Often I hear that one side is horrible while not mentioning that the other side is no better. For example I heard on Duran that Ukraine puts conscripts on the front line, because front line troops are dying too quickly so they don’t want to waste well trained soldiers on defending front lines. It means badly trained conscripts have a really short life span. It’s true but on the other side Russia uses convict troops in the same way. They don’t want waste well trained soldiers to attack front lines when they don’t have knowledge of enemy positions. So they send convicts to get shot at and when they are being shot at by the enemy, the enemy shows their positions. Later either they attack them with artillery or send good, well trained troops to attack when they know the positions of the enemy. Both sides use simple people as cannon fodder So I get irritated by the fact people mention bad things for the one side and omit the bad things of the other side.

33:54

“If you don’t have powerful political patrons ready to protect you from the law or more direct actions, then running a PMC in Russia may not be a pathway to a long and free life. Which brings us to Wagner itself and its long history of operations. I’ll stress here that as a shadowy mercenary group, Wagner doesn’t keep particularly deep and detailed public records. So treat, everything that follows as various degrees of speculation, but here is what I think we believe. There are various precursor organisations to Wagner in its earliest form, in particular the so-called “Slavonic Corps”. But due to time limitations we’re going to skip over those to 2014. Long before Yevgeny Prigozhin had admitted that he financed Wagner, the focus was on its apparent commander, Dmitry Utkin. Utkin was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the GRU Spetsnaz. He quit in 2013 and reportedly founded Wagner in 2014. “Wagner” reportedly was Utkin’s call sign, hence the name of the organisation. There are a couple of clues out there that suggests that Utkin might have right-wing sympathies. His call sign was taken from the Nazis’ favourite composer. Oh, and he apparently has SS runes tattooed on his body and a Reichsadler tattooed on his chest. I mean, who else would you want to put in charge of denazifying Ukraine?” HAHHA

42:05

“Here Russia demonstrated its taste in foreign leaders by working with President Omar al-Bashir, who had been convicted in 2009 for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity by the ICC. In Sudan you see a pattern we’re about to see a lot more of. Wagner went in to provide military and political support to Bashir and his government. In exchange a company called M Invest, which was linked to Prigozhin, got significant gold mining concessions. In exchange for allowing Prigozhin and the Russians to profit off the country’s mineral wealth, then Wagner would provide some muscle for the Sudanese regime. Meanwhile the Russian government was able to stymie US influence and potentially secure basing rights. The Central African Republic deployment had some similar themes. And I truly feel like I’m doing this a disservice by giving it only a single slide. People tend to consider Africa as a monolith, rather than as a massive continent with a huge number of people and nations, each with their own stories. And within that tapestry of nations, the people of the CAR have suffered a lot more than most. The country suffers abysmal poverty and has been in civil war since 2012. But it has immense mineral riches. In 2021 the government struck a deal with Russia for support in exchange for resource concessions. Wagner and Patriot both reportedly deployed. They achieved some gains for the government against rebel forces, but not a decisive impact. Instead it seems Wagner spent much of its time forcibly securing control over gold mines. That often meant brutal treatment of local populations. These resource locations weren’t empty in many cases, they were being exploited by artisanal miners, local people. And reporting suggest that they were in the way of Wagner’s plan for those particular resource deposits. What is for certain is that the war in the CAR continues. The Russian PMCs have not solved that problem, but they have guaranteed a profitable flow of valuable resources out of the CAR to their financial benefit.” By the way this ICC crime is probably nonsense but it just shows Russia is not interviewing out of good heart or because they are good guys but for power and profit like everyone.

46:51

“But as we all know now, Wagner’s role quickly evolved. It wasn’t going to stay a small 1,000 troop force doing specialised tasks for long. The Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had outed himself as the owner and financier of Wagner Group, first increased conventional recruitment for the group. And then started going around the Russian prison system offering inmates a choice. He said that if prisoners would agree to join Wagner, then for 6 months they would serve in the most dangerous roles the PMC could find them, primarily as front-line infantry. But at the end of 6 months if they survived, well that’s it – they would be freed. Now we all know that as the plot of Suicide Squad, but I’m going to assume Russian prisoners hadn’t seen the film, and as a result they signed up by their tens of thousands. Estimates of Wagner manpower grew from 1-5,000 before the war to as many as 50,000, of whom 40,000 were prisoners from the Russian penal system. Those numbers are partly backed up by the fact that in 3 months alone in 2022, the Russian prison population apparently declined by 20,000. Now either Vladimir Putin was signing a lot more pardons, or Yevgeny Prigozhin was paying those prisons a visit. And tens of thousands of Russian murderers, rapists, and serious criminals were given a chance at a new rehabilitation program outside the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut.”

49:05

But Wagner infantry assault tactics were different. You can see my video on Bakhmut for more details, but at a basic level Wagner would push forward its prison conscripts in order to draw fire and identify weak points in Ukrainian positions. The casualties among those personnel were horrific. But where gaps or weaknesses in the Ukrainian positions were identified, the elite members of Wagner with relatively well equipment, including night vision and thermals, would go in to exploit that weakness supported by drones and artillery. Those tactics obviously caused Wagner to burn through an awful lot of manpower, but they did allow it to make slow incremental gains. Albeit gains that were only enabled by a brutal system of discipline that Wagner and its enemies both describe in much the same way. A system of discipline so intensive that it would motivate troops to go forward even to almost certain death. That system of discipline is hardwired into Wagner’s culture. Now I’m not an anthropologist, but I imagine in years to come there will be people who want to study Wagner’s culture in detail. But on the surface it seems to combine elements of Russian prison culture, which is perhaps not unusual given its recruits are from prisons and Prigozhin himself spent time behind bars, with a system of discipline, as I said, that probably belonged more to the Stalinist era. Retreating without orders is cause for summary execution. Disobeying orders is cause for summary execution. Surrendering to the enemy and then being recovered in a prisoner exchange, well, that too may be reason for summary execution in an overly theatrical fashion. The culture of fear that this helps instill is something that Ukrainian officers who have been interviewed had pointed to as an explanation for why these prison recruits in Wagner have been willing to go forward to their almost certain death. Because “almost certain” isn’t certain, and certain is what awaits them if they turn around and go back.”

By the way I am almost sure Ukraine nationalist have same similar culture and same things similar have happened on the Ukrainian side.