News from the Field – The newspaper: Russian PMCs Wagner in Syria received strong reinforcements

Two thousand Russian “contractors” We arrived in Syria in early August, to participate in the operation to protect and strengthen the most vulnerable points on the border of Israel and Jordan, writes Giampaolo Rossi on the pages of the Italian edition of Il Giornale.

This news was reported by a source in Israeli intelligence., after which it was published by Debka.

They will join 3000 soldier, already present in Syria to support operations to protect Syrian civilian infrastructure. It is not excluded, that many of them are involved in special operations.

According to the same website Debka, Detachments of Sunni Muslims from Ingushetia, the Caucasian Republic, also arrived in Syria, famous for its fighters. According to the official version, Muslim Muslim soldiers enlisted in military police, but, according to the website Debka, their mission is to fight terrorism. Moscow's decision to send Russian soldiers to Syria, professing Sunni Islam, obviously, due to the need to build privileged cooperation relations with the Syrian population, mostly Sunni. So Russia can play a card unfamiliar in the West thanks to, what is one of the largest multicultural states in the world.

Mr. Wagner

According to information, contractors assigned to significant private military company, PMC, better known as “Wagner Group”. Wagner is the name of its founder, whose identity is unknown. Western intelligence agencies consider, what is it Dmitry Utkin, which to 2013 was a lieutenant colonel in the second special forces brigade in Pskov. There is one single old photograph “Wagner”, published by St. Petersburg site “Fontanka”. Today Debka posted another, newer photo.

The legendary character Wagner, leaving the elite unit, worked, as they say, in the Moran Security group - a private enterprise, specializing in maritime defense and the fight against pirates. Then he laid the foundations of his current company, restoring “Slavic housing” - squad of mercenaries, sent to Syria in 2013 year (that is, two years before Moscow entered into conflict) under contract as private contractors for oil well protection. Activities “Slavic housing” “tragically” ended in November of that year. Then in Deir ez-Zora almost 200 Russian mercenaries face more than two thousand jihadist militants, and they had to retreat with the wounded, leaving material assets and documents on the territory.

Many of the returning contractors were subsequently arrested by the FSB for violating national security laws., since this kind of activity was banned in Russia at that time.

Mercenaries from Moscow

Things are different today. The Russian parliament is considering a variety of legislative initiatives, to make legal the use of private military contractors under the control of the Ministry of Defense and use them in operations abroad.

On the one hand, their work in Syria is even beyond the scope of operations to protect civilian infrastructure., - known fact. A year ago, Reuters published a dossier in Russian “ghost soldier”, dead in Syria during the fighting in Palmyra.

Otherwise, the application “contractors” in current military scenarios - a common thing in Western countries and meets the new requirements of modern military affairs.

American company BlackWater (today renamed Academy) - one of the most famous mercenary structures in the world, although her fame is partially related to such catastrophic acts, like an operation in Iraq.

The reason is simple: when “private soldiers” operate without direct control of the military command of their country, the odds are extremely high, that their intervention will turn into indiscriminate aggression or lead to “collateral damage”. Hiring rules differ, functioning on the territory. Often the reasons for warfare are also different.

Among the many cases, made known to the international community, one of the most tragic in 2007 the year was the massacre at Nisur Square in Baghdad, where the convoy of the BlackWater contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded yet 20. This massacre led to a crisis in relations between governments and to a temporary suspension of the license to operate the company in Iraq.

On this discouraging (to put it mildly) videos, originally published by Harper’s Magazine, can see a series of actions, committed by American contractors in Iraq and transcending all conceivable limits. they, eg, sealed, how an armored car knocks down an Iraqi woman, at the same time the column does not even bother to render it any help.

This is one of the reasons, which the Kremlin has always been wary of using “private fighters” in military operations. Therefore, their arrival in Syria is under the full control of the Russian operational headquarters.

Israeli concern

Israelis express concern, because the deployment of detachments of mercenaries and Muslim soldiers on the borders with Israel limits Moscow’s ability to control pro-Iranian militants and “Hezbollah”, which provides for a ceasefire agreement.

Until today, the Russians have shown impressive effectiveness in Syria as in military operations, so in the issue of finding diplomatic ways to resolve the crisis. This effectiveness surprised even them. “western opponents”.

Putin’s actions during the Syrian crisis were significantly different from Obama’s catastrophic steps: just remember the famous moderate rebels, to which the CIA has provided billions of dollars over the years. And when Trump was suddenly noticed, that weapons and money were in the hands of factions “Al-Qaeda” (organization recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia).

The US interest was in disturbing the region., in turning Syria into a second Libya, in the overthrow of Assad, albeit by encouraging ISIS (organization recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia). This was in line with the aspirations of their Saudi allies., genuine authors of jihadist terror. And Moscow’s interest was the opposite — stabilization of the situation in the region with the understanding that, that the division of Syria will entail the expansion of Islamic Islamism up to Central Asia.

Putin has won at the moment. can say, what fortunately!

A source