Fontanka Wagner Syria. Wagner PMC: everything that is known about it. PMC leaves Russia

Three Russian journalists - Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguev and Orkhan Dzhemal - were killed in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Monday, July 30. The Russians went there to investigate the activities of the “Wagner private military company.” Journalists and activists have collected much information about her bit by bit over the past years. DW presents all the most important things we have learned so far.

What is Wagner PMC

The Wagner Private Military Company or Wagner Group is an unofficial military organization that is not part of the regular armed forces of Russia and has no legal status on its territory. The military units of Wagner PMC numbered at different times and according to various sources from 1,350 to 2,000 people. According to sources in the German newspaper Bild in the Bundeswehr, the total number of mercenaries reaches 2,500 people.

Ruslan Leviev, founder of the activist group Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), which monitors the actions of the Russian military in Syria, clarifies that salaries depend on skills, goals and location of the operation. During training in Russia, according to CIT, the salary ranges from 50 to 80 thousand, during foreign operations - 100-120 thousand, in the case of military operations - 150-200 thousand, in the case of special campaigns or major battles - up to 300 thousand .

Where do mercenaries train?in Russia

The "Wagner Group", according to numerous testimonies, trains at a military base near the Molkino farm in the Krasnodar Territory, directly adjacent to the 10th separate special forces brigade of the GRU of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (military unit 51532). There is no information about other training points.

Losses among mercenaries

Calculating losses among the “soldiers of fortune” is complicated for a number of reasons: the illegal status of the PMC and its fighters, the company’s formal lack of accountability to government agencies, and a non-disclosure agreement. As a result, relatives of the victims often find out about what happened only several weeks later. The Russian Ministry of Defense refuses to record losses among mercenaries.

In October 2017, the SBU provided data on 67 victims who had experience of combat in both the Donbass and Syria. As of December 2017, Fontanka journalists estimated the total number of identified losses since the beginning of mercenaries’ participation in hostilities in Syria at 73, and the CIT team at 101 people.

See also:

From "spring" to war

At the beginning of 2011, the Arab Spring reached Syria, but the first peaceful demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the police. Then, starting on March 15, mass protests began to break out throughout the country demanding the resignation of Bashar al-Assad. It was hardly possible to imagine that those events would mark the beginning of a conflict that would drag on for eight long years and claim the lives of almost half a million Syrians.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Parties to the conflict

After a wave of mass protests swept across the country, Assad began using the army to suppress them. In turn, opponents of the regime were forced to take up arms. National minority groups (for example, Kurds) and Islamist terrorist groups, among which the so-called “Islamic State” stands apart, also entered the conflict.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

"Caliphate" of terrorists

In April 2013, militants of the terrorist organization ISIS, formed from a division of al-Qaeda, entered the civil war in Syria. In June 2014, the group announced it was renaming itself “Islamic State” and proclaimed a “caliphate.” According to some reports, in 2015, the Islamic State controlled about 70 percent of Syria, and the number of militants was 60,000 people.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Cultural heritage as a target of terrorists

The destruction of the ancient oasis city of Palmyra has become a symbol of the barbaric treatment of cultural heritage sites by IS terrorists. In total, more than 300 archaeological sites have been destroyed since the start of the civil war in Syria. In February 2015, the UN Security Council equated the destruction of objects of historical, cultural and religious value by IS militants to terrorist attacks.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Migration crisis

According to the UN, 5.3 million Syrians have fled the country over the past seven years. Most of them found refuge in neighboring Turkey (more than 3 million people), Lebanon (over 1 million) and Jordan (almost 700 thousand). But the capacity of these countries to receive refugees was practically exhausted. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled to Europe to seek refuge, sparking a migration crisis in the EU.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

International coalition against IS

In September 2014, US President Barack Obama announced the creation of an international coalition against the Islamic State, which included more than 60 states. Coalition members carried out airstrikes on militant positions, trained local ground forces, and provided humanitarian aid to the population. In December 2018, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of American soldiers from Syria, citing the victory over the Islamic State.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Islamic Anti-Terrorism Coalition

In December 2015, Saudi Arabia presented its anti-terrorist coalition consisting of Islamic countries. It includes 34 states, some of which, like the Saudis themselves, are also members of the international coalition led by the United States.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Russian participation

Since the fall of 2015, the Russian Aerospace Forces have also been carrying out strikes in Syria - according to Moscow, only against IS positions. According to NATO, 80% of Russian air strikes were aimed at Assad's opponents from the moderate opposition. In November 2017, Putin announced the imminent end of the military mission in Syria. The group will be reduced, but the Russian Federation will still have 2 military bases and some other structures at its disposal.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Peace negotiations

On March 14, 2016, on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the start of the civil war in Syria, negotiations on a peaceful settlement of the conflict under the auspices of the UN began in Geneva. The first such attempt in early February ended in failure amid the offensive of Assad’s army on the city of Aleppo. A second chance appeared after the conclusion of a truce between the parties on February 27 with the assistance of the United States and the Russian Federation.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Use of chemical weapons

According to a joint UN-OPCW report, the Assad regime was responsible for using the chemical agent sarin in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017, and the Islamic State used sulfur mustard during an attack in Um Khosh in September 2016.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Agreement on security zones

Since January 2017, in the capital of Kazakhstan, on the initiative of Russia, Turkey and Iran, parallel inter-Syrian negotiations on a settlement in Syria have been held in Geneva. For the first time, representatives of both the Bashar al-Assad regime and opposition forces met at the same table. In May, a memorandum was signed in Astana on the creation of four de-escalation zones in northern, central and southern Syria.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

A year of radical change in Syria

2017 brought radical changes to the situation in Syria. Back in December 2016, Assad’s troops, with the support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, liberated Aleppo, and in the spring of 2017, Homs. And in June, US-Russian agreements were reached to establish the Euphrates River as a dividing line between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Assad’s troops.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Defeat of ISIS, but not yet final victory

In 2018, Assad’s troops occupied the strategically important city of Deir ez-Zor and a number of others. And the opposition "Forces of Democratic Syria" and the Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units with the support of the United States - Raqqa. On March 3, 2019, the decisive battle took place for the last settlement of Baghgus, which is in the hands of IS. After the liberation of the village, only the remote region west of the Euphrates will remain under IS control.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

"Troika" in Sochi

In 2017, at a meeting in Sochi, the leaders of the Russian Federation, Iran and Turkey, Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came up with a number of initiatives, calling on Damascus and the opposition to participate in the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, which should open the way to constitutional reform. In 2019, the leaders of the three states said that control of Syria should return to the government in Damascus.

Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

New use of chemical weapons in Duma

According to humanitarian organizations, on April 7, 2018, in the city of Duma, the last hotbed of resistance by Islamists and rebels in the region, chemical weapons were used again. According to WHO, more than 70 people died during the attack, and 500 residents showed symptoms of poisoning. The Syrian authorities denied this information. But on March 1, 2019, OPCW experts concluded that chlorine was most likely used in Douma.

It is interesting to observe the change in the direction of the fight against the Russian army in the press. Both foreign and Russian. It must be recognized that the methods of such struggle have become more sophisticated. Now no one takes seriously obvious “stuffing”, like “the Russians fled from ..., abandoning the wounded, weapons and equipment.” Any information can be easily verified, and the author of such “stuffing” will not be trusted.

And the Russian army gives little reason to criticize it. Georgia, Crimea, Syria... Problems are being solved. And they are being decided in a situation where it would be much more difficult for the armies of other countries. Any “puncture” causes a flurry of articles about the weakness and inability of the Russian army to protect us. Be it a downed plane or a plane lost on the Admiral Kuznetsov. We cannot have losses in war. This is probably the main motive for such attack articles.

It is clear that the enemy, and I consider those who periodically “crap” our army as opponents, enemies, if you will, are looking for ways to discredit our army in the eyes of those who see precisely the strength of the RF Armed Forces. The armies of Europe and the United States have seriously screwed up in Syria. It turned out that, despite criticism of the actions of the Russian Aerospace Forces, it is Russia that really wins. The rest just kill. They kill without really thinking about who. A shell from a large-caliber artillery shell on city blocks or a bomb there kills “selectively”. They don’t touch civilians, but the militants standing nearby (only if they are not “moderate”) are mowed down in the thousands.

Today, many publications have published articles “from reliable sources from everywhere,” which actively promote the idea that Russia owes its successes in Syria and other places not to its army, but to... private military companies! Not trained and constantly trained soldiers and officers of the Ministry of Defense and other law enforcement agencies perform the most difficult tasks, but employees of private military companies. Former special forces soldiers and retired officers.

The funny thing is that even among our readers there are those who believe in this nonsense. Turn on your brain in order to understand that a retiree 50 or older (and many are in this category today) will never be able to “work” more efficiently than a 30-40 year old man. Even with excellent training in the past.

The first “test of the pen” in this direction was made in 2014. It was then that reports appeared in the press from “unnamed but reliable sources” in the Donbass about the participation of PMCs on the Republican side in the conflict. It was then that the “journalists” threw in this material to look at the reaction of the authorities of Russia, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kyiv.

It was then that readers learned about the “Slavic Corps” and the “Wagner Group”. The “smog” in the materials was such that only a truly prepared reader could understand where the truth was and where the lies were. That is why the reaction from official and unofficial persons was calm. Bullshit. What should I comment on? There is a law, there is a constitution. Read and everything will fall into place.

In order to understand this reaction, it is necessary to return to the origins of these materials. In Russia, the spread of this topic is mainly due to the publication from the city - “the cradle of three revolutions” and the “Chizhik-Pyzhikov” title. The materials are based on the study of the experience of conducting combat operations by foreign armies. This is the “Western cliché” that they tried to “put” on the Russian army.

Western armies, in particular the Americans, do widely use PMCs in other countries. This is due to the fact that large losses of the army during combat operations can cause public protest and force the operation to be stopped even before the end of the war. Such cases have happened. In 1993, in Mogadishu (Somalia), the Americans lost 18 people killed and about 80 wounded. The operation was stopped and the troops were withdrawn. And the losses of PMCs do not in any way affect the image of the army. Nothing personal, just business.

Today, those who are “instructors” in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are most often employees of PMCs. Former military personnel, but now private citizens.

Those materials passed without much excitement. Moreover, journalists “shamefully remained silent” about the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the Constitution of Russia. Meanwhile, the participation of a citizen in armed conflicts on the territory of other countries provides for 7 full years in some Mordovian colony (Article 359). And for recruiting, training and financing mercenaries - 15 years.

Very often, supporters of the idea of private military companies refer to the Montreux Document. It is in this agreement that 17 countries (Russia did not sign, if anyone is not aware) allow their citizens to provide services for armed security of facilities, maintenance of military complexes, training of specialists, etc. In Russia, by the way, there is a fairly strong lobby that advocates the adoption of the law on PMCs and the Montreux Document.

In March last year, deputies Gennady Nosovko and Oleg Mikheev (A Just Russia) introduced a bill to legalize PMCs. However, we received a clear answer from the government of the Russian Federation that the project contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Article 13, Part 5). Those who would be directly involved in PMCs reacted in the same way. Ministry of Defense, FSB and Prosecutor General's Office. Even the relevant committee of the State Duma gave a negative review. The bill was successfully withdrawn six months later.

From all of the above we can draw a simple conclusion. There are no real, legal PMCs in Russia. Those that are on the market under Russian names are nothing more than companies created somewhere offshore. The companies do the same work as others, but nothing connects them with Russia. Accordingly, Russians who work in such companies work abroad, risking falling under Article 359 in Russia. As it happened with some “workers” of the “Slavic Corps” from Hong Kong. In January 2015, the leaders of the Slavic Corps, Evgeny Sidorov and Vadim Gusev, received 3 years in prison for participating in battles in the Al-Sukhna region (Homs province).

Now about the main thing. About who today, according to some media, is the “culprit” for the victories of the Russian army in Syria? It turns out to be the “Wagner group”. It is about this company that you can read everything in the same “chizhik-pyzhikov.ru” publication, in Baltic publications, in Polish... There is no point in listing “friends”. Readers are literate people. They will find and draw their own conclusions.

Journalists from the “cradle of revolutions” first reported on this group in October 2015. Then the country was “seething” from the events in Crimea and Donbass.

Readers will remember the role of "polite people" in these events. And now, just for the sake of testing your brain’s ability to create “ducks,” try to connect Crimea, “polite people” and PMCs...

Was it stupid? But it was precisely this nonsense that journalists from the city on the Neva presented as verified information. The Wagner group, or more precisely, a detachment of former employees of the “Slavic Corps”, was seen among the “polite people”! In February-March, the “Wagner Group” allegedly actively took part in the events in Crimea as part of the Russian Armed Forces.

About a little over a year later, a new message followed. Now the “Wagner Group” is fighting in the Donbass. And as an independent squad! I know that such detachments really existed. More precisely, groups. It would be a stretch to call these units a detachment. And they performed primarily reconnaissance tasks. But they acted in 2014. When the Republican army received a normal army structure, the units were absorbed into the units or disbanded.

Who is this terrible, omnipresent Wagner? From open sources it is known that this is Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Utkin. He served in the GRU special forces brigade in Pskov. In 2013, he signed a contract with the Slavic Corps and left for the Middle East. It was there that he became the commander of a detachment of fighters from Anton Andreev’s company “Slavonik Corps Limited” (the official name of the “Slavic Corps”).

Further more. The “Wagner Group” has simply become a treasure trove for various kinds of stuffing. The beginning was made by the fairly well-known and authoritative publication WSJ (The Wall Street Journal) at the end of 2015. Then the journalists of this publication spoke about the death of 9 people from the “Wagner group” in Syria. So what is next...

Today you can read quite serious articles about the “Wagner Group” as a highly classified unit of the GRU. “Irrefutable facts” are presented that this PMC is subordinate to the Russian Defense Ministry. This is also a base in Molkino, where fighters are trained before being sent to Syria. This includes transporting fighters on Russian military aircraft. This includes supplying the “group” with weapons and armored vehicles through the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Readers (as people associated with military topics) can independently add to the list of “military secrets of the most secret military unit” of the Russian army. You can write whatever you want. Moreover, the “excuses” have already been created before you. It is impossible to refer to anyone from the “Wagner group”: there “are very strict rules” regarding secrecy. And violating these rules threatens a person with “very serious consequences.” A sort of symbiosis of a military unit and a gang of criminals who are “tied in blood” and “respond with life.”

In the same way, you can talk about the “combat operations” of PMCs, referring to employees of the Ministry of Defense, FSB, GRU, sanitary and epidemiological station or environmental protection agency who wished to remain anonymous. But the question arises: are there really PMCs or any security structures in Syria? Still, “smoke without fire”...

The answer is simple. Yes, such structures really exist. And they really do security. Therefore, the personnel of those whom we know reliably are most often former employees of the law enforcement agencies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other security specialists. In February 2016, Sergei Chupov died in Syria. A former officer of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who retired in the early 2000s and began working for PMCs. Chupov went through two Chechen wars. According to some reports, he was part of the “Wagner group”.

Private companies that have their business in “hot spots” often use such PMCs specifically to protect their business. Agree, any oil or gas pipeline is a sufficiently vulnerable and expensive object to neglect the security service. The losses can be such that you can even lose your entire business. And guarding such objects with “guards” without serious small arms is stupid.

Private companies cannot attract army units. Army soldiers do not have such powers and perform completely different tasks. By the way, such security is carried out by all companies that operate in difficult conditions. Companies from any country. In the same way, it was PMC fighters who guarded ships in the Gulf of Aden.

There is one last aspect that I would like to mention. It has nothing to do with our internal affairs. It's more external. At the beginning of the article, I wrote that our “friends” from the Baltic states and Poland write a lot about Russian PMCs. What caused such interest in Russian PMCs in these countries? It seems that NATO has already sent soldiers there. And armored vehicles.

The fact is that the armies of these countries are a pitiful semblance of a modern army. Any politician and military man understands perfectly well that such armies are needed only for parades. In real life, these warriors will not be able to do anything. And they won't want to. And "Leopards" and "Abrams" in the Baltic swamps are nothing more than a target. And it is necessary to create the illusion of at least a ghostly opportunity to resist the Russian army.

This is where numerous stuff about PMCs was needed. The idea is simple. The Russian army is no stronger than ours. She's just bigger. But well-trained PMCs are truly powerful. Moreover, one against which the army is powerless. An Estonian hunter will be able to calmly hold back the advance of an entire unit. Moreover, it will act in their native places. In the same way, trained guards will be able to wage a long-term war with the enemy army in the nearest forest.

The algorithm is as simple as a Makarov pistol. It’s just that the evidence base is completely sad. And in fact it turns out that Wagner PMC won everything. And in Crimea, and in the Donbass, and now in Syria. How many people should a company have? “Academy”/“Blackwater” are nervously smoking on the sidelines.

And then, why only Wagner? Is there anyone else? Or is everyone “even more secret” than Wagner?

Funny and disgusting. In proportion 50/50.

It's funny, because it's funny to watch how a bunch of keyboard figures are creating more and more outright nonsense and stupidity around Wagner every year. And the limit is not yet visible, to be honest. Having squeezed out Crimea, defeated the Ukrainian Armed Forces, defeated terrorists in Syria, what next? Next, Wagner will probably plan and carry out the takeover of the world.

Stop. The world is being taken over by Putin. According to those same publications gushing with hypotheses. Putin’s right hand is Shoigu; apparently, Wagner is destined for the role of his left hand.

One gets the feeling that Wagner’s PMC is a kind of army. In the dark. It's just not visible. But this is another army with tanks, self-propelled guns, and other things that the “source” gushed about. Well, and in numbers accordingly. Here we are not even talking about thousands... Dozens are sitting in the dark.

But that's not the point. The point is how brains are processed today. Where does everything come from? We conducted our own small investigation and, with considerable surprise, noted the fact that absolutely all the cries about Wagner’s “huge shadow army” come from one place.

In St. Petersburg we have such a phenomenon as Fontanka.ru. That's where it flows from. Since 2015. Someone decided to “saddle” the theme of PMCs and throw out fountains with enviable regularity.

Everything would be fine, but as soon as the next fountain appears, our Baltic neighbors immediately begin to vigorously inflate it. And then the Poles... and off we go. Materials are quoted, analyzed, inflated. And ours too.

And now a fair share of the audience is beginning to believe that the “shadow army” really exists. This is how outright speculation and invented “eyewitnesses” drop grains of doubt into the heads of readers.

This is what is disgusting.

"Wagner's private military company" is illegal in Russia. They don’t talk about her on state channels. But its fighters died in the Donbass and Syria, and now they are probably working in Africa. DW has collected all the evidence about this PMC.

What is Wagner PMC

Officials in Russia deny the existence of the Wagner PMC. The Kremlin only acknowledges that Russians may privately participate in military operations abroad. Mercenary is prohibited by Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, however, proposals have been made in the State Duma and the Russian Foreign Ministry to legalize private military companies in Russia. Talking about the goals of Russian journalists in the CAR, the Russian state media reported that they “filmed documentaries in the republic about the life of this country.”

Where did “Wagner” come from and what are Prigozhin’s interests?

Dmitry Valerievich Utkin “Wagner”, born in 1970, is considered the head of the private military company of the same name. He apparently took up this activity after his dismissal from the post of commander of the 700th separate special forces detachment of the 2nd separate special forces brigade of the GRU, stationed in Pechory, Pskov region. A copy of the report on his dismissal is available on the Internet. Nothing is known about its authenticity, but there have been no denials either. In 2016, Utkin was spotted at a special reception in the Kremlin for military personnel who distinguished themselves by their special heroism. Since June 2017, Utkin has been under US sanctions; the US Treasury list states: “Connected with the private military company Wagner.”

Evgeny Prigozhin

Some of the sources of funding for PMCs in the media are the secret items of expenditure of the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is also called “Putin’s chef.” As RBC found out, Evgeny Prigozhin participated in several tenders to maintain the base of the Wagner group.

Prigozhin himself, who is also under US sanctions, denies any connection with Wagner PMC. There is only indirect evidence of his involvement. Since the winter of 2016-2017, the Russian company Euro Policy LLC has become interested in developing gas and oil fields in Syria. According to the publications RBC and Fontanka, she is affiliated with Prigozhin.

In the summer of 2017, Euro Policy entered into an agreement with the Syrian state concern that it would be engaged in the protection and production of energy resources in local fields and would receive at its disposal a quarter of the volume produced from the towers that it recaptured from ISIS militants, AP reported with reference to for a copy of the agreement. It is believed that security functions should be taken over by Wagner PMC fighters.

Where did Wagner's mercenaries fight?

Wagner PMC is believed to have grown out of the Slavic Corps military company, which carried out combat missions in Syria back in 2013. The future head of the PMC, Dmitry Utkin, call sign “Wagner,” was also a member of the “Slavic Corps.” The first evidence of the activities of the Wagner PMC was recorded by Ukrainian intelligence services in May 2014 in the Donbass. In October 2017, the head of the SBU of Ukraine Vasily Gritsak announced the involvement of “Wagnerites” in the destruction of the military transport Il-76 in eastern Ukraine in June 2014, the storming of Donetsk airport and the fighting near Debaltsevo. There is no independent confirmation of this information.

Wagner PMC, according to various sources, twice participated in the liberation of Palmyra

Since the second half of 2015, evidence of the activity of Wagner PMCs has appeared only in Syria. It is believed that its fighters, in particular, actively participated in the first and second assault on Palmyra in 2016 and 2017. Since June 2017, the goals of the mercenaries, as reported by the Russian media RBC and Fontanka, have changed. Fontanka wrote that the Russian Ministry of Defense has sharply reduced the supply of weapons to PMCs, transferring only outdated models.

Allegedly, PMCs offered to receive funding in Syria itself, including through the seizure and protection of oil and gas fields. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the attack in the area of the Syrian village of Husham, allegedly with the participation of Wagnerites, was carried out in the area of an oil field and, according to some sources, was aimed at capturing it.

Interests of Russian PMCs in Africa

The interest of Russian mercenaries in the region was recorded after negotiations between senior Russian leadership and the leaders of Sudan and the Central African Republic in the fall of 2017. According to the British BBC, traces of Wagner PMCs have been seen in Sudan since the end of 2017. Russian journalist Alexander Kots published a video of a Russian instructor training soldiers in Sudan, with the caption “everyday life of a Russian PMC.”

According to The Bell, mercenaries numbering about a hundred people are training Sudanese military units. In exchange, as the publication believes, the companies M Invest and Meroe Gold, associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, signed concession agreements for gold mining in this country.

The road to Siby, where Russian journalists were killed

But armed people from Russia were also seen in the neighboring Central African Republic, and it is possible that we are talking about a new PMC, not associated with the Wagner group. Officially, all that is known is that Russia is studying the possibilities of “mutually beneficial development of the natural resource reserves of the Central African Republic. In 2018, the implementation of exploratory mining concessions began,” as the Russian Foreign Ministry announced at the end of March.

The Foreign Ministry also said that Moscow “free of charge” supplied a batch of small arms and ammunition for the needs of the Central African army in late January - early February, and also sent 5 military and 170 Russian civilian instructors to train CAR military personnel.

The first to report that “civilian instructors” could be members of Russian PMCs were the French radio station Europe1, the AFP agency and the publication Le Monde. According to their information, the Russians chose the estate of the country's former leader Bokassa as their base, 60 kilometers from the capital Bangui. An AFP correspondent who visited the scene said he was unable to take photographs or video.

Private army fighters: who are they?

The recruitment of mercenaries, judging by the information about the dead, was taking place throughout Russia. Many of those killed in Syria previously had experience of fighting in eastern Ukraine. This is confirmed by both relatives and acquaintances of the dead mercenaries. According to the Ukrainian SBU, there are 277 people who fought in both “hot spots”.

Recruitment of private army personnel appears to have not been limited to Russia, but also to residents of parts of eastern Ukraine under separatist control. According to the SBU, as of October 2017, 40 soldiers with Ukrainian passports served in the Wagner PMC. Several Russian media outlets previously provided similar information without specifying exact figures.

How are mercenaries accepted and how much are they paid?

Mercenaries hired by PMCs sign a non-disclosure agreement. The St. Petersburg publication Fontanka reported the most details about the work of the Wagner PMC, which claims to have part of the company’s internal documentation. Referring to published copies of documents, Fontanka claims, in particular, that all applicants fill out forms with personal information, photographs, undergo a polygraph test and receive from 160 to 240 thousand rubles per month for their work.

Where do mercenaries train?in Russia

Losses among mercenaries

See also:

From "spring" to war

At the beginning of 2011, the Arab Spring reached Syria, but the first peaceful demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the police. Then, starting on March 15, mass protests began to break out throughout the country demanding the resignation of Bashar al-Assad. It was hardly possible to imagine that those events would mark the beginning of a conflict that would drag on for eight long years and claim the lives of almost half a million Syrians.