Russia's War in Ukraine Exposes Risks Posed by Private Military Groups

They are called mercenaries or contractors or volunteers, and they fight on both sides in the war in Ukraine. But whether they are regarded as villains or heroes, their presence is having an unquestionable impact on the battlefield. The dark side of the irregular fighting forces assisting and resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion was driven home this week when two ex-convicts told a human rights group they had deliberately killed Ukrainian children and civilians while serving as commanders in Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group last year. In videos posted online by Russia’s Gulagu.net, Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev described their brutality in graphic detail. “I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” said Uldarov, describing how he fatally shot a 5- or 6-year-old girl. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private military company whose convict-bolstered ranks have been instrumental in the months-long battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, has denied those allegations and threatened retribution. But Sean McFate, a former American officer and private military contractor who is now a professor at the National Defense University, said no one should be surprised to see atrocities committed by a military force staffed largely with convicts. “When you are … opening 11 time zones of jails and dumping into Ukraine … you’re creating a labor pool of psychotic armed men who are running around Ukraine and that region and that doesn’t end well,” he said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian. McFate added that the use of mercenaries often goes hand in hand with the arms trade and other illicit practices including human trafficking and narcotics. Robert Young Pelton, a veteran war journalist who has covered more that four dozen conflicts around the world, argued in an interview that the Wagner Group has become an embarrassment not only to Russia’s regular forces but to their country as a whole. “Russia has professional soldiers that have some of the finest spetsnaz, special operations people,” Pelton told VOA Ukrainian. But by unleashing the Wagner Group in Ukraine, Russia has created an especially dangerous precedent as they legally are “not answerable to anyone.” “There's no one going to investigate Wagner and judge them for being good or bad because they're technically not a part of a state apparatus [or] any state-sanctioned organization,” said Pelton, whose reporting has taken him to Afghanistan, Chechnya and Liberia and brought him into contact with the Taliban and Blackwater security contractors in Iraq. “We now have Russians murdering people inside Ukraine … and are not really held accountable, and yet they’ll integrate back into society inside Russia.” On the other side of the paramilitary ledger, Ukraine is supported in its defense of its homeland by several outside groups, some playing a direct role in the fighting. Among these are the American veteran-led donor-funded organization Project Dynamo that saves civilians from war zones in Ukraine and Afghanistan, and a now-disbanded international Mozart Group that was evacuating civilians and training Ukrainian soldiers. Some of its former members reorganized under a new name, Sonata, and continue to operate in Ukraine more discreetly, coordinating both with Ukraine’s high-level military officers and battlefront units to understand operational issues and provide technical solutions. Kyiv does not reveal the numbers but based on media estimates, roughly from 1,000 to 3,000 foreign volunteers are defending Ukraine now, most of them serving in three battalions of the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. The legion was formed shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for the help of “every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country.” In a written statement to VOA Ukrainian, the legion said that multiple foreigners in the regiment fought bravely and earned high praise from their comrades and commanders, as well as state honors. Some foreign nationals who as part of other battalions served in the weekslong siege at the Azovstal steel plant and in Mariupol also received state honors. But not all of the foreigners who have flocked to Kyiv’s defense have served so honorably. The New York Times has reported that some foreign volunteers ended up undermining the war effort, wasting money or even defecting to Russia. The Kyiv Independent has also reported on misconduct within the International Legion leadership that included physical abuse, threats and sending soldiers on reckless “suicidal” missions. “The problem is, during the war you get what we call ‘the ash and trash,’ people who don’t know what else to do in their life,” McFate said. “The good ones tend to leave because they don’t want to get killed with the bad ones. And what you are left with are a refuse from the other wars in Iraq, Afghanistan. And not all of them are bad, but this is a common problem of private warfare,” he said. When asked how the Ukrainian Foreign Legion screens its volunteers, VOA Ukrainian was told that all the soldiers undergo an examination by recruiters, background checks by the government and training before being deployed to the battlefield. But Pelton said that private contractors “always muddy the water” when brought into a war. “Within that very narrow segment of foreigners fighting in Ukraine, they're more of a problem than a help because they bring international condemnation, confusion, and sort of a moral question to why these foreigners are here.” Despite the moral and legal uncertainties, some experienced American warriors say they are still willing to fight for the right cause. One of these is Dan Hampton, one of America’s most decorated combat pilots with 151 missions in F-16s. He is also the author of several books and the CEO of MVI International, a private military company based in the western U.S. state of Colorado. “This is the pivotal issue of the Ukraine’s fight against Russia, this is a black and white conflict. … I’ll go myself, I’m – one, you can count me in,” Hampton said in an interview with VOA Ukrainian on March 9. Hampton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who received four Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart, suggested that American contractors could help Ukraine with one of its most vexing problems — its need for an enhanced air combat capability. Ukraine has for months appealed for the United States and its allies to provide the country with F-16 fighters, but the U.S. has so far refused, arguing that the planes are so complex that it would take months if not years for Ukrainian pilots to become proficient in them. Hampton suggested that if F-16s were provided, experienced foreign pilots could fly them while Ukrainian pilots train or continue to fly their existing aircraft. This article originated in VOA’s Ukrainian Service.

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