Abstract

In this episode, Dr Tor Bukkvoll discusses The Wagner Group and Russian private military companies from Ukraine to Syria – the emergence of  a new tool of clandestine warfare.

This podcast series is presented by Dr Alessandro Arduino, Principal Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore.

Listen to the full podcast here:

Full Transcript:

[Alessandro Arduino]: Welcome to the 23rd episode of the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute podcast series Boots off the Ground: Security in Transition from the Middle East and Beyond. In the series, we look at the future of warfare, which will see uniformed soldiers – or boots on the ground – being replaced by private military companies, autonomous weapons systems and cyber weapons. My name is Alessandro Arduino and I will be your host for the series.

We are very glad to have with us today, Dr Tor Bukkvoll Senior Research Fellow (B.A., M.A., PhD) at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. Dr Bukkvoll has studied political developments in Russia and Ukraine since the mid-1990s, especially in the areas of defence and security. He speaks Russian and Ukrainian and obtained his PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Dr Bukkvoll was a visiting research fellow at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey) in 2019-2020 and in the Changing Character of War programme at the University of Oxford in 2008. He worked as an associate professor of international relations at the Norwegian Military Academy in 1996-1999 and has previously also worked at the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO).

I think that today we can start to talk about Russian private military and Ukraine. We are talking just a few hours after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces – what Russia calls a “limited military intervention”. Thank you very much for joining us today, Tor.

[Tor Bukkvoll]: Thank you all so much for having me on your podcast. It’s one of the most special days of my professional career with what’s happened just hours ago but I think we’re going to be able to make the podcast.

[Alessandro Arduino]: Thank you again for being with us. We have been talking intensively on this podcast of ours, about the Russian and Chinese private military and security sector for some time. We had Dr Candace Rondeaux and Dr Sergey Sukhankin some time ago talking about the Wagner group. In light of what’s happening in Syria, but considering the ongoing anxiety now over Ukraine, I really wonder if we can start our discussion looking at the emergence of Russian private military companies in what you define as a new tool of clandestine warfare, in your research. Tor, the floor is yours.

[Tor Bukkvoll]: Thank you. Actually, right now it feels kind of awkward to even talk about clandestine warfare when we have a full-scale invasion going on, but still, this is, I think, a topic that both you and I can agree will be with us for many years, even if we have a full-blown war going on at the moment.

So, I want to approach, your question by starting with something about why Russia established PMCs in the first place.

Although Russia has a traditionally been using proxy forces, they do not have a long tradition of private military companies. Actually, it started around 2010 mostly, and one reason why they establish these companies was basically an imitation of the West – they saw that that’s a blooming industry in the West and I think especially what started the trend, was that.

Their own companies abroad started to employ Western private military companies for protection when they could have done so themselves. I mean, Russia has a lot of ex-military personnel so that’s one reason. Another reason, which is almost all in Syria, is that they needed ground forces.

PMCs are not part of the regular military but they are a kind of foreign military adventures.  That’s another reason why Russia established private military companies but then we come to what you asked about – a new tool or clandestine warfare.

Here, actually, there is a quote from Vladimir Putin who said that private military companies is a good idea because they could be an instrument for the realisation of national interest, where the state itself does not have to be involved.

Knowing what Putin meant by that was not that the state is not behind it but that the state, as such, doesn’t do it directly. So, I think that was that’s why we chose the title in our research paper to be private military in clandestine warfare, because Russia needed it.

PMC adds more capability in terms of being able to use force and at the same time, in the shadow, I mean you can do this, of course, with special operations forces but private military companies would mean that the forces your use is a little bit further from the state. So it’s still possible to say that they’re not there. There is a Russian name, actually, for these companies – now they call them Yihtaniete and that means those who are not there. So they have even developed a special Russian name for labelling the nature of these forces.

[Alessandro Arduino]: I see that’s very important. As you mentioned that now there is a full blown warfare, why we need to talk about can help us to understand warfare and why we need to talk about private military company because if we just move out the loop from Ukraine and we shift to other areas and I’m looking from Ukraine to talk about the Middle East and Africa. Or the discussion centered over the Wagner group is still going on, and I believe that not only Wagner group, but there is a vast assortment of Russia private military and security company beside Wagner, so can you list some of this company and describe their differences and similarities with Wagner Group.

[Tor Bukkvoll]: Sure, I can and it’s important that you bring this up because since the Wagner group has been the dominating topic, all these companies, obviously do not receive enough attention, but a you’re very right to point out that there there’s there are many more companies so.

When my colleague and I wrote the article – actually two articles on this – we try to categorise Russian private military companies in three groups.

And we call them bottom up commercial, bottom of ideological and top down political/commercial. So, I’m just going to briefly talk about each group and then give the names of the other companies in each of the groups.

So, in terms of the bottom-up commercial companies, those are actually the first ones that were established in the early 2000s and 2010 and some even before that, I think.

These companies modelled themselves very much on Western private military companies and also had the same kind of commercial outlook and they didn’t – I think- plan very much to take part in regular combat, they would do, and probably training an guard duties They started actually in a in a Russian city called Ariol so there are a group of companies called with different names called around Ariol Group. There are other like Moran Security and the most famous is probably the RSB group.

A new one appeared in 2019 called Vega which is registered in Cyprus and seems to be kind of mix Russian Ukrainian PMC actually. Personnel from both companies, the last one, as far as I know, only does training, but it has been training, for example, both in Africa. Especially in Africa, but the bottom-up commercial companies, the main point here is that they were meant to be commercial not so much tools for Russian foreign policy, but then this is Russia and you cannot just ignore it. The deal in Russia, and the Russian call it the Russian mobilization state, is that you can establish the company, you can earn money but if this State calls upon you to do something for the State, then you show up otherwise you’re out of business. For example, RSB, as far as we know, also took part in fighting in Ukraine.

So, even though these companies are the ones the bottom-up commercial ones, are the ones that look the most like the Western companies, because this is Russia, they will have to fight for Russia, whenever Russia asked for that.

Then the second group is the bottom-up ideological companies we don’t have a lot here, there are two as far as I have seen, one is called MOD and the other one called ANOD.

And ANOD is questionable if it ever existed very much as a company, but the inner core of the company basically was a grouping of Russian far right radicals and patriots that they wanted to do something for Russia, and then they also got paid for it, so there but they were not established from the top, they were established bottom-up.

Still, because they, for example, they did fighting in Ukraine, but. I think the State find out, that it is not an easy task to have some kind of control of this. That’s what we know from Russia sources inside.

The inner group was also closely coordinating with the GRU and probably at the times had GRU advisors and the GRU trainers in their group to make sure that when there was a call for action they actually did work according to what the Russian military wanted them to do.

So that’s the second group at the bottom of ideological ones and it has been in huge troubles lately and it’s basically close down, so I think that this bottom up ideological.

I think that it is probably something that’s going to go away, this is also in correspondence with Russian thinking in general that the Russians are not too happy with the groups coming from the very ideological background, because they are less easy to control, compared to the ones that are in for the money.

Finally, the top down, political, commercial group or Wagner is their most important and also there are a number of others companies. There’s one called Patreon which is said to be close to the MOD, there is one called Shil or Shield. Which is said to be consisting mostly of personnel from the 45th specialists’ brigade.  A lot of airborne forces join these top down political companies and we would call them basically mercenaries, because they are created by the state to do the state’s business and then to some extent, they can do commercial things on the side.

So, for example, there is this famous episode in Syria in Dei Al Zour where Wagner fighters where part of the Russian war effort, but then in their spare time they also took on paid missions, for the Syrian Government and one of his missions, was to take control over a. gas or oil facility in an area where they entered into combat with the Kurdish militia and then actually were rushed over by the US armed forces. What we know about that episode, which is a very famous episode, is that most likely the rest of the Russian General Staff did not know about this mission, so I think that this idea of having this top down political PMCs doing, partly work for the Russian State and partly and earning money on their own, in the same theater operations is probably dangerous

But that, I think, is an overview both of the types of companies and over the name of their most important ones.

[Alessandro Arduino]: I see that having a side job and the side gig involving kinetic action ended up with more than 120 casualties when the US army obliterated that combat group in a few hours. It is still a compelling issue, especially when you point out that we are not talking about mercenary group as it had been several times, mentioned from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But now, especially with Ukraine and Russia’s near abroad on fire, and I am talking not only about Donbass but also about the 44-day war in Nagorno Karabakh, the recent crisis in Kazakhstan, or even if we look at places like Afghanistan, are we going to see Russian private military in the Moscow near abroad from Kabul to Yerevan about or even Baku?

[Tor Bukkvoll]: I would say both yes and no. I’m not so sure if we will see many of them there, maybe we will but it’s hard to know about it.

In Russia there is still a very strong Afghanistan syndrome so getting involved militarily over there – not that long since they were there the last time – and that was a disaster. The Russian people know or remembers those times so I think they will be reluctant to use force there.

But all, I guess, depends on how the Taliban rule actually develops, especially in terms of foreign policy. If they become a center for further radicalisation in Central Asia, then Russia may still get back to a point where they think they need to use force in that part of the world and especially in Afghanistan. A couple of private military companies may be part of that. It all depends, of course, and what kind of missions they would send them out to do, especially with Wagner.

PMCs seem to be relatively flexible in time so what kind of operations do they do? It seems that – when they fought in Donbass at least – they were more of an elite group doing special operations forces work in Syria also, to some extent.

Because there was a need for much more ground troops and as far as we know, the recruiting pattern of PMCs changed from highly qualified special operations forces personnel to more regular people who had joined after regular military service or even those who did not join the military service.

Assembling these PMCs depends on the operation and what kind of operation it’s going to morph into – providing enough guns, in case something happens. If we move on from Afghanistan to other places in the post-Soviet space, then these companies will be quite useful in a kind of non-attribution use of force or power away.

It’s interesting, for example, to discuss the legalisation of the private military companies and you should know that. Russian private military companies, as such, are not legal in Russia. There’s no legislation on which their activities are based so their function is borderline to the existing regulations.

Russian private military companies are not legalised in Russia. They are, so to say, existing on the margins of the law and this is for a purpose.

I think it’s because it makes it easy for the Russian state to control them. There have been three attempts to legalise them in the Duma and one argument for legalising them was exactly this post-Soviet space mission. So what this legislator, who argued for the legislation of the private military companies said there had been functioning private military companies in Russia, like Wagner, at the time of the revolution in Ukraine and the first one, the Orange Revolution in 2004. Therefore, PMCs could be used as a kind of company for renting them out to our friends in the near abroad, so that they can use these companies to put down popular rebellions.

And that may still happen. I mean, there are still many countries as we saw recently. In Kazakhstan, where there is a government that is autocratic and you occasionally will have popular uprisings against it and for that purpose, these companies will probably fit the Russian needs.

The Russian authorities kind of rent out institution to dictators that want to keep their populations in place, you might say.

[Alessandro Arduino]: When we mention these spread of different private military companies, in my opinion, considering that you are an expert on Russia defense and you speak Russian, it will be very informative to look at the Russian academic discourse on its own private military company. How do you think that Russia perceive its own PMCs?

As for the overall private security sector, we already know very well that from a journalistic point of view in Russia’s reporting on Wagner and the Russian PMCs is, let’s say, unhealthy.
I remember some comment about them from Minister Lavrov when he was talking about the recent Wagner Gate report from Bellingcat.

The Russian MFA made some joke about Higgins but when the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes a joke, Russian security is deadly serious. So, looking at the role of Russian PMCs, let’s say in Mali where the local government called for their help, what is your take on how the Russian academic discourse is looking at Russian PMCs?

[Tor Bukkvoll]: Yes, thank you. It’s an important question and a good question so I’m going to divide my answer into two. I will first talk about the issues on sources and then talk about the academic study on private military companies in Russia.

So, in terms of sources it’s true, as you said, referring to a private military company studies, although they are still, as I said, illegal in Russia.

PMCs are just casually referred to and the government claims there’s nothing to do with us that’s the one know our private military companies. One might think that this would open up the possibility that it wouldn’t be as dangerous as it has been to investigate these companies, but I don’t think that’s going to change very much what he said about the PMCs

Academics and journalists finding out about Russian PMCs is going to continue to be as dangerous as it has been as and you probably know, and maybe also some of the listeners know that Russian journalists have been killed in action, so to say,  because of studying these companies, It happened, especially in the Central African Republic, so I think we’ll go, we have to live with a lack of data on this for a very long time, there are a lot of courageous journalist in Russia that will try to still try to investigate the phenomena, but it will be still very dangerous for them, I think now there is another kind of opening in that.

As we know that Russia has mostly used these companies in the developing world and well, basically abroad, this means that once you send your forces abroad, they expose themselves to journalists in other countries. So there are now quite a lot of reports from Africa in particular, but also from other places in local sources in Africa or in different Western sources because once the troops are there, they will, to some extent expose themselves and we can learn from them actually – through other sources than the Russian sources so that’s that kind of the cost for Russia, in terms of using these companies.

I would have to say that the Russian academia is not very active in terms of analysing their own private military companies. You will find journal articles mostly about law but I don’t think there is even one book yet, in Russian. There will be journal articles on PMSCs, but again, this being the Russian academia, they will have to be careful about what they write and what they say. My impression from reading the Russian academic sources on private military companies is that they tend to focus very narrowly on the legal aspects of this so they don’t really discuss the political purposes or the way the companies fight.

Corruption is inevitably connected with this. They focus very much on the legal aspects because that’s safe ground, you may say.

Then, if we move from Russian academia to the international academia in the study of private military companies, I would say that there is a rapidly expanding literature on this, despite their lack or limited amount of material to study.

Also, there is nevertheless the rapidly expanding literature because I think people around the world, and especially in the West realised that this is very important and that we need to know something about this. I have to say though – I think that literature mostly stays within the area studies so I haven’t seen very many that could produce theoretically oriented articles on Russian private military companies. In fact, I gave a presentation on this topic a few years ago at an international conference where the panel was on private military companies and I have never felt more out of place in any other panel because their academic discourse on private military companies seemed to have basically limited itself to Western PMCs. Since there is not much happening in this area, the whole academic discourse seems to have gone off in a very theoretical direction so I was giving kind of a very on-the-ground presentation whereas most of the other presentations were good – they were logical but gave a completely different feeling of being highly theoretical.

Basically, I couldn’t see any connection between my own research and the research at that particular panel.

[Alessandro Arduino]: I agree with you and looking from an academic perspective in the West, the number of serious researchers on Russian PMCs is quite small and I’m very glad to have you with us as we can complete the circle with few others who have already been on our podcast.

Also, I have to say that it’s quite compelling and interesting at the same time, that in Russia, there is no discourse on the own development of private military companies in academia.  Why so? For example, in China – where I’m looking at most of the time – it’s private security, not a private military. Since 2009, there has been an increase in discussions that is not only related to the legal aspect, as it was in the 90s. Untill 2010, the Chinese academic discourse was mostly related to law and regulations but now, the direction of interest is in the privatisation of the state monopoly on violence. Of course, which Chinese characteristic looks at other roles and makes comparison with war zones. It started with Black water in Iraq and in Afghanistan and now, it has been taking new shapes – I’m referring to Turkey here.

Where we are seeing, now, the development of new private military company and in your opinion, especially now that there is increasing friction between China and the United States, Chinese private security is looking at a different angle. Is there is going to be an overlap of interest from Moscow, Beijing and even Ankara?

In private military and security co-operation – I’m saying that because among the company that you mentioned before – in your top-down analysis, more than one of these are interested in working with China. A few years ago, I met with a manager of a Russian PMC that you mentioned, if I recall correctly, during a Chinese private security conference, so do you still think that there is a possibility of co-operation among Russia, China and Turkey?

[Tor Bukkvoll]: One would think so, especially with Beijing, of course. I have to say that I am not a specialist – neither on China or on Turkey but I mean, relations with Beijing, it’s the closest they have been in many years. Russia and China are even co-operating in terms of nuclear weapons at the moment so if they can do that, why couldn’t they do it in terms of PMCs?

So maybe we will see something of that. Although, I have to say again, I’m a little bit skeptical. You may correct me if I’m wrong here but my impression is that the Chinese private security companies and the Russian ones currently do relatively different work. It seems to me the Chinese private military companies are very concerned about or very engaged in the protection of Chinese investments abroad – basically where there’s rationales – although they do some of that as well as we know from Syria, Africa and other places, are much more in a combat role and not only protecting Russian interests. So, if they kind of work in that way, it may prevent  co-operation. Another thing, I think, is that although China is very much on Russia’s side, I still think China is afraid of getting tied up in Russian military adventures that it does not think is a good idea. This is my impression and you may correct me here. For me at least, China sees Russia a little like a loose cannon on the deck and especially so with the problem that they started just last night – the invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese may be reluctant to tie themselves too closely to this loose cannon on the deck. Finally, on China, if you look at Africa in particular, Russia and China may still be in some kind of a competition in terms of influence in the continent and it will block future co-operation.

I’m not ruling it out but I see some obstacles, at least. If we move to Ankara and Erdogan, their relations are good in some respects and problematic in others and I think, both.

Putin and Erdogan, are, to some extent in similar positions. So they find each other on the kind of level of how politics should be done but they keep ending up on different sides of the various conflicts – they are on different sides in the conflicts in Syria and Libya.

Also, they were on different sides of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. We don’t know about Ukraine yet but I saw just this morning that Turkey has assembled its security council to discuss what Russia has just started in Ukraine, so we will see. I don’t rule out the possibility for more co-operation but I see some strong obstacles against it.

[Alessandro Arduino]: Tor, thank you very much for your time, especially now that I know you’re extremely busy. I want to go on and “abuse” your time for hours but we are at the last question – it’s quite a sad one because I’m going to ask if we are going to have a war in Ukraine tomorrow.

I mean, I don’t need to ask you about this as the events already surpassed our wildest imagination but let me go back to the previous question – I totally agree with the two things you mentioned about China and Russia.

First, the Chinese operate private security and not private military companies. They are bent on protecting the Belt and Road.

So the difference is that they are not the tip of the spear, as it happened with Wagner. Also, both presidents – Putin and Xi – mentioned at the Olympics that we are in a new year of international relations but then again, China’s hinge on stability and preserving the status quo and why Russia thrives on chaos (or at least manageable chaos), as we are witnessing right now.

Having said that, I must ask you the $1 million question that I ask all our guests – how is the evolution of Russian private military going to look in the next 30 years? I’m especially intrigued to know your forecast and your knowledge about the Russian special operations forces and the fact that they are an important part in the contemporary and future of private military companies.

[Tor Bukkvoll]: Yes, thank you. So, I have an answer ready for you. I mean, I was preparing for this podcast and had an answer ready but now I don’t know if it’s still going to be relevant.

The outcome, or what started building just this night, is going to be relevant for this as well.
If in the end – and this is – I think this is a possibility.

Putin’s regime might fall on what he just started then that’s going to have a huge impact – also on how private military companies in Russia develop over the next 30 years. But let’s say that’s not happening – let’s say that the world we have been living in since until now is going to continue for the next 30 years – then I think private military companies will definitely continue to be important for Russia and the big question here is: will Russia, in a new world with even more extreme problems in relations with the West, switch its private military companies from only doing work in the developing world to doing work in the West or towards Western countries? Because I don’t think that’s out of the question anymore.

For us, at least in the US, there’s of course a very dangerous development and if that happens, I think, as you alluded to, it will be very much in connection with Russian special operations forces.

When they started developing the private military companies, that was also based on an idea that had been floating around in Russian military for some time – that the Russians prior to the Russian special operations forces needed some kind of ‘old boys’ teams, so to say. I mean, people who had this experience should be able to use it even after they left regular service.

Therefore, they probably know that the Wagner Group and the other ones that I mentioned that are top down, are very closely related to the rest of the special operations forces there are today.

That’s going to continue and it depends on how Russia is going to use private military companies. As I said before, how Russia is going to use them in the future – if they’re going to be used for ground combat or guard duties, they don’t require special operations forces training so that will, to some extent, move the country away from special operations forces, I think because that [special operations forces] is very expensive per individual.

So, you don’t need that kind of highly trained personnel for those kind of roles but if Russia continues to use private military companies in this condensed, fine warfare role not only in the developing world but also against Western countries potentially, then I think the integration with this special operations forces community will be even higher in Russia as it already is today. I think we can say that it’s kind of a symbiosis between the special operations forces and the private military companies, so we may, for example, in the future, see that if Russia wants to do something somewhere with a little use of force, they can send their regular special operations forces but just claim that they are private military companies. So it’s really in this scenario that it’s going to be increasingly difficult, I think, to differentiate between private military companies and special operations forces.

[Alessandro Arduino]: Tor, again, thank you very much for being with us and for your time. I’m sure you are going to have a very, very long working day today. I want to thank the audience as well, for being with us. The next podcast that will be about the evolution of the Chinese private security companies in protecting the Belt and Road Initiative.