Why is Russia so reliant on mercenaries?
LONDON - Russia is sending battle-hardened Wagner mercenaries to eastern Ukraine as it shifts its focus away from encircling Kyiv to consolidating its control over the Donbas, Western officials have warned, writes The Week.
The mercenaries boast extensive “combat experience in Syria and Libya”, The New York Times (NYT) reported, and are “gearing up to assume an increasingly active role in a phase of the war in Ukraine that Moscow now says is its top priority”.
The number of mercenaries in the country is “expected to more than triple to at least 1,000 fighters from about 300 a month ago”, the paper said, citing a US official. “Wagner is the best-known of an array of Russian mercenary groups, which over the years have become more formalised, acting more like Western military contractors.”
Blunt instrument
Russian troops last night “began withdrawing from Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north”, The Times reported, “as fighting intensified in the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the East”. The Kremlin’s invading force has “suffered a series of defeats around the capital” in recent days, “most recently losing control of the city of Irpin”.
The UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest intelligence update that the Wagner Group is being deployed as a result of “heavy losses and a largely stalled invasion”, adding that they were being moved to Ukraine “at the expense of operations in Africa and Syria”.
The group had previously been sent to the capital Kyiv with orders to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a string of other key figures in the Ukrainian resistance.
The private militia has “garnered military experience in Middle East conflicts” and “serve as security advisers to various governments, including in the Central African Republic, Sudan and, most recently, Mali”, the NYT said.
They are “loosely linked to the Russian military”, but “operate at a distance, which has allowed the Kremlin to try to deflect responsibility whenever the fighters’ behaviour comes under scrutiny”. In 2021, the European Council sanctioned eight people close to the group, stating that Wagner is involved in “destabilising activities in some of the countries they operate in”.
In 2017, the Trump administration sanctioned Dmitry Utkin, the founder of the group, for his role in recruiting soldiers to join separatist forces in Ukraine. In 2021, a UN report seen by the NYT found that Wagner mercenaries in the Central African Republic had killed civilians, looted homes and murdered worshippers at a mosque.
The group is financed by billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies. Western officials told The Times that there are doubts over whether the group’s “fearsome reputation” is justified, noting that they dug themselves “into a number of holes” during operations in Libya.
An official added there was a “degree of desperation” about Russia relying on mercenaries.
Arm’s-length ally
“Western intelligence services detected the first small groups of Wagner mercenaries leaving Libya and Syria and arriving in Russian-controlled Crimea” in early 2022, the NYT reported. But their “initial performance on the battlefield was decidedly inauspicious, as they faced stiffer-than-expected resistance from Ukrainian soldiers”.
