Wagner Group Exemplifies Putin's Failed Experiments With War: Lessons For India

Members of the Wagner Group military company sit atop a tank on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Saturday, June 24, 2023, prior to leaving an area at the headquarters of the Southern Military District. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Yevgeny Prigozhins troops who joined him in the uprising will not face prosecution and those who did not will be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry. After the deal was reached Saturday, Prigozhin ordered his troops to halt their march on Moscow and retreat to field camps in Ukraine, where they have been fighting alongside Russian troops.

(Photo: AP/PTI)

The French Imperial experiment of the French Foreign Legion was born from a questionable and colonial desire to raise a force, “that could face danger and human losses without drawing the political backlash that French-born victims would elicit”; curiously known as the combatants without legal existence.

Hollywood romanticised this tough band to ‘scions of aristocratic families leaving behind gambling debts’ from any land or ethnicity (150 nationalities!) to become the fabled French Legionnaires.

No questions were asked nor documents sought and enrollment came with the option to hide or change their identities forever. These mercenaries fought for the Legion and not France itself, hence the motto ‘Legio Patria Nostra’ or Legion is my country!

While such brouhaha and bombast may spark public imagination, it also makes for a sobering contrast when viewed against the professional and regular soldiers sworn to a nation and its constitution. Disciple is the first and foremost casualty and history suggests dangerously very ‘iffy’ results. With a sizeable composition of Germans in its ranks, the Legionnaires simply refused to put up a fight against Nazis in World War II.

Advent of PMCs & Armed Wings of Political Parties

Recently, Russia’s infamous Private Military Contractor (PMC), the Wagner Group featured in news, one which has typified the age-old dangers of abetting, supporting and using PMCs in conflicts, which could potentially turn into Frankensteinian monsters.

The (de)merits of Putin’s own position on Ukraine notwithstanding, the private band of armed mercenaries led by Yevgeny Prigozhin is a classic case of crony capitalism gone sour. In latest development, the latter is said to have taken to exile in Belarus as the paramilitary troupe has purportedly agreed surrendering arms after failed insurrection.

In the modern era, capitalism has birthed a new phenomenon of Private Military Contractors (PMCs) to train, supplement, or conduct discreet operations under the garb of ostensible 'non-state actors’. Their actions can fall within the large spectrum of legitimate guarding duties to even as 'unlawful combatants’ as per Geneva Conventions.

This grey spectrum has earned notoriety for the likes of the US Private Military Contractor, Blackwater (which subsequently got rechristened as Xe Services, Academi, Constellis Holding) for its excesses, indiscipline, and unaccountability.

It is also not unusual for commercial organisations or even NGOs to partake in the services of PMCs in hostile territory, eg., Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. While various global conventions to regulate the activities and conduct of PMCs have been adopted, it remains a grey zone, unlike the fully accountable services of a sovereign’s Armed Forces.

The infamy of the Abu Garib prison scandal (where 36 per cent of proven incidents were attributed to PMC contractors), Russia’s RSM-Group for their bloody hand in Syrian swathes, South African Executive Outcomes, and their documented atrocities in Sierra Leone are just some examples of the phenomenon.

Each of these espouse the partisan cause of their parent political leadership with violence and open call-to-arms – the implicit danger herein is the loyalty and conflation of the idea of the nation, to their parent political set-up.

The Wagner Saga Vis-à-vis Ukraine Crisis: A Repeat of the Inevitable

Once called 'Putin’s Chef’ (former hospitality czar), Prigozhin’s Wagner Group had swelled up to 25,000 strong combatants who carried out Russia’s dirty wars in the Middle East, African continent, to most recently, the Ukraine war. His murky antecedents included conviction in the Soviet Union era, to then riding the wave of Putin’s patronised lackeys, where he set up the Internet Research Agency, a propagandic tool to further Putin’s agenda.

By 2014, his shadowy Wagner Group of mercenaries were undertaking Putin’s dark but successful war in Crimea. There was no stopping and soon the Wagner boots-on-ground were seen in Syria, Central African Republic, Libya to finally and fatally, in Ukraine.

Like all deliberately facilitated demigods, Wagner combatants and Prigozhin in specific, started disrespecting the ‘redlines’ of discretion and were seen openly railing against the Russian Forces and their leadership. Admittedly, the Wagner combatant (mercenary) was more ruthless, kinetic and efficacious as compared to the dispirited Russian Army soldier who was unwillingly drawn into Putin’s misadventures.

A repeat of the infamous ‘contractor’ spirit faring better than a commissioned soldier in the short run, loomed – Prigozhin started bargaining and taunting the Russian top shots, as his own credentials and legend grew. However, the dam finally broke when his intransigence and bravado got the better of him and he turned against his primary creator ie, Putin and the Russian State!

What is clear from all this is Putin’s faith and experiment in PMC-like experiment is shattered and Prigozhin has dealt him an embarrassing blow, especially after the humiliating and continuing stalemate in Ukraine. Wagner Group will now face the full wrath of Putin, but if it is to be the end of a once-superpower, Russia, only time will tell.  

India’s Tryst with PMC-like Conceptualisation

While India has dealt with multiple insurgent groups, it has disallowed a PMC-like formation that is State-friendly or carries out violence on its behalf. State-sponsored vigilante formulations like Salwa Judam (or, Peace March) as part of counterinsurgency were also called into question and rightfully banned by the Supreme Court. The standard issues of exploitation, human right violations and excesses had beset the experience.

A similar concern had emerged from Village Defence Guards (VDG’s) in the J&K valley wherein the logic of self-defense was posited by the state, and then the inevitable happened. Reforms and checks have now been put in place, but there is universal acceptance amongst the security experts that arming one group of civilians against the other can never be a viable solution – ultimately it is only the State’s apolitical and professional ‘Uniformed’ apparatus that can deliver.

Affording any sort of weaponising is fraught with incalculable risks as it is a slippery slope that can regress towards acquiring machetes, crude weapons, bombs, etc., under the pretense of protecting its ‘own’. For the political heat to metastasise into weaponising dangerously is the real threat to the writ of authority and constitutionality.

It is with the same structural concern that the comment of the leader of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, that, “Sangh will prepare military personnel within three days which the Army would do in 6-7 months. This is our capability. Swayamsewak will be ready to take on the front if the country faces such a situation and Constitution permits to do so”, raised many eyebrows and was downplayed.

Any sort of weaponising of the ‘Non-State’ elements, irrespective of their purported contribution to the cause of nationhood can never be a reason to weaponise the same. Put simply, no partisan-ideological outfit should be allowed to wear and abuse the mantle of ‘nationalism’.

Arming any ideological-partisan force collaterally ‘anti-nationalises’ all other partisan-ideological thoughts e.g., the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is not the Chinese Armed Forces but instead the Military wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – something that should be remembered.

History is instructive that if PMCs or any other form of ‘Non-State Actors’ are provided legitimacy then it comes back to haunt, each time, sooner than later. Putin is waking up to the same, now.  

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)