Is Russia restoring a centuries-old practice long discarded of private military power existing outside of state control? Will this end up destroying the rump Russian empire that Putin has wanted to expand?
The Wagner Group is getting weird. It's rather amazing that Russia is subcontracting their only active offensive sector to Wagner:
Russian mobilization efforts are channeling mobilized Russian personnel to the Wagner Group, indicating the increasing importance of Wagner to Russian combat capabilities.
And this is on top of Wagner's ability to recruit from prisons for the cannon fodder it needs.
It has the most active sector of Russia's front line, with the only sustained--if bloody and crawling--Russian offensive effort.
And it is building its own defensive
lines behind the lines apart from Russian orders, recruiting outside of
the Russian recruitment system, establishing militias in Russian
territory bordering Ukraine, reaching into the civilian sector, boasting
of past interference in America's elections, and defying the authority of the Russian and local governments.
Wagner even brutally and publicly killed one of its recruits who had surrendered to the Ukrainians, claiming this was a lesson to traitors. It is unclear how the man was back in Wagner's custody. This murder outside of the Russian justice system--with the Russian government saying the killing was none of its business--is just astounding, no? Please note:
Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin continues to establish himself as a highly independent, Stalinist warlord in Russia, becoming a prominent figure within the nationalist pro-war community.
At some point Wagner may have the power to resist rather than assist Putin:
Russian opposition media outlet Meduza reported on November 16 that two sources close to the Kremlin stated that Prigozhin is thinking about creating a “conservative movement” that may become a political party.
He may not be the first. But don't be surprised if Prigozhin falls down a flight of stairs or out of a window before then.
We've certainly seen Russia recruiting abroad and even internally outside of the normal military structure of Russia. As this article notes:
Soufan Center, a nonprofit global-security research group, says that “the battlefield in Ukraine is incredibly complex, with a range of violent non-state actors—private military contractors, foreign fighters, volunteers, mercenaries, extremists, and terrorist groups—all in the mix.”
But while Ukraine's use of foreign mercenaries/volunteers is apparently going down (I recently advocated that path to jump start an increase Ukraine's air power), that is not the case for Russia. Note:
The popularity of Wagner Group forces may have inspired the creation of further private military companies (PMCs) for use in the war in Ukraine. Odesa Oblast Administration Spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk claimed that Russian officials are planning the creation of an “Orthodox PMC” under the Russian Orthodox Church on November 12.[59] Private military companies are illegal in Russia.
Fascinating.
On vacation I read a fascinating book (Mercenaries, Pirates, & Sovereigns by Janice Thomson ) about how Western states monopolized military power for inter-state wars only fairly recently in the last century or so. Privateers and private or state army units bought and sold by rulers to increase their military might were ended. Companies acted as nations and waged war. Indeed, even the once common practice of recruiting globally for your armies and fleets has declined to virtually nil.
America's reliance on in-house government assets since World War II changed after the Cold War, first with logistics and then, during the war on terror, with private military companies taking on training and even some combat duties to protect bases.
Private entities, unhappy with the protection of the state, will fight for their own objectives which may not--and most likely won't--match our national objectives for very long.
Vigilantes arise anywhere when the authorities fail to provide security or justice. If lawfare undermines our government's ability to defend our society from our enemies, private military groups will wage war on the jihadis--or even against Islam in general. As Wretchard notes, if WMD attacks on our cities are a threat from small groups of Islamist fanatics, Mecca is under threat of the same if those under attack by Islamic thugs--Christians, Hindus, Jews, or whoever--decide to fight fire with nuclear fire and go to the perceived source of the problem.
In many ways, our state-centric views hobble our efforts against non-state actors who may wield destructive power hitherto reserved to states. But our state-centric system is not all bad. If freebooters join our Long War, and the system of Westphalia is breaking down and private military entities return, we might want to remember the impact of religion and private military forces on Europe in another long war--the Thirty Years War.
That war's horrible events led to our Westphalian system which we may be seeing broken up in our era.
But my vigilante worries didn't become real. And the West kept its private military contractors under control. There were no private conventional military units used in combat.
Is Russia's rejection of the West having as one consequence a willingness to resort to non-state military power in Russia to reverse battlefield defeats? Russia has used such power abroad through Wagner. But now a losing war effort on its very border is pushing Putin to expand this source of military power into Russia itself. Where does this end?
Russia as a country has ground force split among an army, airborne forces, the Interior Ministry, and Putin's National Guard.
Russia already had--since 2014--separate Donetsk and Luhansk combat formation under Russian control. Now we see regional units being formed all across Russia proper. Units the regional governments must pay for. Units relying on bonus payments that make those troops better compensated than regulars. And with locals providing equipment, better equipped than federal conscripts. We see Wagner growing in power. We see religious units being formed. First Chechen and now the Orthodox Church. And Russia has brought in the notion that Russia is literally fighting Satan in Ukraine.
Can Moscow herd these kittens?
Russian forces operating in Donetsk Oblast include conventional units of the regular Russian Armed Forces, mobilized servicemen, Wagner Private Military Company troops, BARS (Russian volunteer reserve) formations, militia units from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, soldiers from Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen units, and volunteer battalions.[16] This bizarre congeries of combat forces will have considerably less effective combat power than would a grouping of regular units of similar size.
Russia's imperial army is built to be fractured:
The lack of structure inherent in the combination of DNR forces, LNR forces, Russian contract servicemembers, Russian regional volunteer servicemembers, Russian mobilized servicemembers, and Wagner Group Private Military Company (PMC) forces creates an environment that fosters intra-force conflict.
If they can't be made to fight together against a foreign enemy, would they one day turn on each other?
And has Putin preserved his National Guard to be the strongest force standing in such a conflict, even as the army and airborne forces are being bled? Although would it remain loyal after this war has eroded their morale and confidence in him?
Will the result be a Thirty Years War fought across Russia? A country with nukes? Will demobilized veterans of Ukraine's military and foreign volunteers offer their services to Russian factions? Will foreign private entities--religions, ethnic groups, companies, and ad hoc groups--finance or even carry out military operations via privatized military operations? Will foreign countries be pulled covertly or overtly in to stabilize portions of Russia or to secure nuclear weapons and research facilities?
And will the eventual end re-strengthen the Westphalian state-centric system or codify its loss of dominance?
I want to defeat Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But never say things can't possibly get worse. In different ways, of course. Putin remains the ruler of the Sick, Angry Man of Europe.
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
