Mercenary Motives: Unpacking the Kremlin’s Opposition to Settling the Legal Status of Russian Private Military Companies

Much like this (purported) photo of a Russian mercenary in Syria, the legal status of Russian private military companies is quite blurry.

On 27 March 2018, the Kremlin notified the State Duma that it disapproved of a draft law seeking to regulate Russian private military companies (PMCs). The draft law in question, submitted this past January by deputies associated with the social democratic “A Just Russia” (SR) party, proposes placing the Ministry of Defense (MoD) in charge of licensing PMCs, as well as harmonizing their legal status with relevant provisions of the Russian Constitution and Criminal Code. The bill also mandates that PMCs must be registered as private limited companies, or “obshchestva s ogranichennoj otvetstvennost’yu” (OOO), and must maintain an initial capital of no less than RUB 10 million (approximately USD 174,600).

Articulating the legal basis behind its position, the Kremlin argued that the abovementioned bill violated Article 13.5 of the Russian Constitution, which, among other proscriptions, prohibits the establishment and activity of OOOs engaged in the creation of “armed formations.” Russian media report that the bill is also opposed by the MoD, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Guard, the Federal Security Service, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the Federal Protective Service, and the General Prosecutor’s Office.

As noted above, the SR draft law on PMCs was introduced in January 2018. That same month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke out in favor of creating a legislative basis for PMC activities after Grigoriy Tsurkan, a Russian mercenary working for the PMC known as“Wagner,” was executed by the Islamic State. A month later, hundreds of Russian contractors affiliated with Wagner were reportedly killed by U.S. aircraft and artillery fire during a joint assault with pro-Assad militiamen on a Kurdish-held oilfield in eastern Syria.

This latter debacle has prompted a great deal of speculation regarding how PMCs like Wagner might factor into Putin’s broader foreign policy stratagem. Some have asserted that the Kremlin uses contractors working for Wagner and other PMCs in order to provide plausible deniability of its ongoing military operation in Syria, which has the additional benefit of watering down the actual number of Russian casualties, thus avoiding irritating domestic audiences already wary of Russia being drawn deeper into the Syrian quagmire. Others maintain that the Kremlin has, in fact, effectively ceded operational control over the activities of Wagner and other PMCs to their respective shareholders, allowing the latter to pursue their own commercial interests — at least, so long as those interests demonstrably coincide with the Kremlin’s own interest in ensuring the survival of the Assad regime.

Indeed, leaked documents indicate that OOO Evro Polis (Tax Identification Number 5024166727) – a Moscow Oblast-based entity affiliated with Wagner principal and Putin ally Yevegeny Prigozhin – was contracted by the Syrian government to secure Syrian oilfields in exchange for a 25% stake in the profits produced by same fields. Prigozhin was reportedly in contact with Putin’s Chief of Staff, Anton Vaino, the day prior to the February incident, the existence of this contract strongly suggests that OOO Evro Polis provides PMC services abroad with the Kremlin’s imprimatur. So much was reflected by the US Treasury Department’s decision to impose sanctions on OOO Evro Polis in January 2018. Yet here it is also worth noting that Treasury imposed separate sanctions on Wagner – identified simply as “PMC Wagner,” with no Tax Identification Number given – back in June 2017. This begs the question: if OOO Evro Polis is understood to constitute a legal entity qua being an OOO distinct from Wagner, then what is Wagner?

One possibility may be that Wagner is the trade name that OOO Evro Polis employs when providing PMC services abroad. Yet per Article 1538 of the Russian Civil Codex, Russian companies are not required to register trade names with state organs; as such, there is no way to verify whether Wagner and OOO Evro Polis are one and the same entity. Corporate records do show that OOO Evro Polis registered a branch office in Damascus on 25 May 2017, but this too does not definitively tie the company to Wagner. Adding to the confusion, some media outlets have conversely characterized OOO Evro Polis as being a front for Wagner, which can be interpreted as meaning that Wagner is behind OOO Evro Polis. Whatever the case, all available information suggests that Wagner does not represent a private military company, at least not in sense of being a corporate entity registered with the Russian Federal Tax Service or any other competent economic authorities.

The fact that Wagner and similar PMC entities all appear to operate on behalf of the Russian state, and not against it, thus undermines the legal argument behind the Kremlin’s opposition to the SR draft law. For all intents and purposes, Wagner and its contemporaries occupy a legal gray zone in Russia. Because they are not legal corporate entities as such, their operations technically do not violate Article 13.5 of the Russian Constitution. Moreover, some Russian legal commentators have interpreted Article 13.5 as applying only to entities (commercial and other) that organize armed activities with the aim of violating Russia’s territorial integrity and/or fomenting internal unrest. Given that the SR bill provides for MoD oversight of PMCs, there ought to be a limited risk of legal status being granted to PMCs bent on overthrowing the Russian government.

For this reason, it is curious that the Kremlin based its opposition to the SR draft law on Article 13.5 of the Russian Constitution, especially considering that Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation explicitly prohibits mercenary activities. Article 359 defines mercenary activities as “the recruitment, training, financing or other material support of a mercenary,” and prescribes punishments ranging from four- to fifteen-year jail terms and/or fines up to RUB 500,000 (approximately USD 8,720). Russian courts have handled cases involving Article 359 offenses on numerous occasions since 2013; however, the majority of these legal actions were undertaken against defendants accused of involvement with Ukrainian nationalist militias or with Syrian militant groups opposed to the Assad regime (see the Slavonic Corps case). In other words, the Russian government’s application of Article 359 may be generously described as selective, if not politically biased.

One could argue that the Kremlin opposes legalizing PMCs precisely because their indeterminate legal status amounts to a feature, and not a bug, of their utility vis-à-vis creating plausible deniability for Russian military and intelligence operations abroad. There is much to recommend this thesis from a tradecraft perspective. However, there is no less reason to surmise that Putin and certain of his allies fear that placing PMCs under MoD jurisdiction would leave them vulnerable to a shadow coup staged by proxies of the military and national security establishment. At the very least, this would certainly make for a good Tom Clancy thriller.

Whatever the case, SR is by no means the only group in Russia seeking to create a legal basis for PMCs. Interest groups like the Moscow-based Association of Military-Security Companies, for example, have increasingly lobbied the Kremlin to resolve the legal status of PMCs and other armed security firms, arguing that legalizing their activities would be a value-add in terms of Russia’s military and counterterrorism capacities. Even so, the costs of regulating the PMC industry may well outweigh any such benefits, not least being the reputational risk associated with passing legislation contravening the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. Even though Moscow is not a party to this convention, adopting such a measure would only serve to further weaken Russia’s already diminished credibility as a guarantor of international law.

Perhaps Putin, emboldened by his all-too-convincing victory at the polls earlier this month, will test the waters of economic liberalization during the first hundred days of his fourth presidential term by legalizing Wagner and others of its ilk. The fact that no less a hardliner than Foreign Minister Lavrov supports legalizing PMCs over the objections of the Russian security establishment suggests that this particular issue may emerge as a new front in the perennial competition between the siloviki and reformist camps of Politburo 2.0.  Or perhaps there is room for compromise – an arrangement where, to paraphrase Mao, market reforms might grow out of the barrel of a gun.

– Allen Maggard

Meet the Next Russian Ambassador to the United States

Yesterday, the International Affairs Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (i.e. the lower house of Russia’s parliament) reportedly endorsed the candidacy of career diplomat Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov for the post of Ambassador to the United States. Rumors of Antonov’s candidacy first emerged this past February through the Russian business newspaper Kommersant.

Earlier in the week Russian wire agency RIA Novosti also reported that the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation (i.e., the upper house of Russia’s parliament) would review the Antonov’s candidacy for the post of Russian Ambassador to the United States on May 22^nd. If approved – and there is little reason to suspect he will not be – Antonov will replace Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, the current Russian Ambassador to the United States and a central figure in the ongoing “Russiagate” scandal.

Rumor has it that the Kremlin is removing Kislyak because of his connection to the aforementioned imbroglio. The Russian Embassy in the United States has so far kept mostly quiet on the matter, save for resident press secretary Nikolay Lakhonin, who jibed that “fake news in the U.S. has zero influence on [the] decision-making process in Russia.” Nevertheless, certain aspects of Antonov’s professional background indicate that his candidacy may be intended to ‘reset’ Moscow’s relations with Washington – though strictly on Moscow’s terms.

Antonov appears to have been born on 15 May 1955 in the southwestern Siberian city of Omsk. He reportedly obtained the equivalents of a master’s degree in economics and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1983 and 1978, respectively. In 1978, he joined the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reportedly serving in various unspecified diplomatic and central administrative postings. Antonov stayed on with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) during and after its reorganization into an organ of the Russian Federation.

Between 2002 and 2004, Antonov served as MFA’s diplomat-at-large, and from 2004 to 2011 headed MFA’s Department of Security and Disarmament Issues. During this latter period, Antonov led Russian delegations in negotiations aimed at halting the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and participated in negotiations with the United States for the third Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (“New START”).

In February 2011, Antonov was appointed by presidential decree to the post of Deputy Minister of Defense. In this capacity, Antonov liaisoned with diplomats and military attaches from such countries as Argentina, Botswana, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Laos, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, as well as represented Russia at gatherings of defense ministers from various Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SOC) member states. On 18 December 2016, Antonov was appointed by presidential decree to the post of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, wherein his responsibilities reportedly pertained to unspecified political and military matters.

Antonov’s nomination has been applauded inside Russia as a necessary corrective to Kislyak’s now-tainted brand. Professor Andrey Anatolyevich Sidorov of the Moscow State University Department of International Politics framed his praise of Antonov in strictly pragmatic terms: “With all due respect to Kislyak […] he is a very controversial and ambiguous person in eyes of the US establishment. As for Antonov […] he is a veteran diplomat whose relationship with US leadership will be made easier due to the absence of all the ideological ‘baggage’ associated with Kislyak.”

Indeed, Antonov himself spoke out on Thursday of the need to reset US-Russian relations: “A great task is ahead of us – namely, to rectify the current situation. No one is talking about abandoning their own positions. We need to convince our colleagues in the United States that good-neighborly, equal, and mutually respectful relations are in the best interests of the Russian and American peoples.” Building on this point, Antonov furthermore affirmed his belief that Moscow and Washington “are positively fated to positive cooperation” on such issues as counterterrorism and counterproliferation.

Amiable though these sentiments may seem, they are not without certain political calculations. For the past two decades, Russia has reached out to the United States time again and time again to cooperate on security issues, both to advance its own security interests and to secure recognition from one global power to another. And, time and time again, these overtures have been rebuffed for the simple reason that Washington and Moscow hold fundamentally divergent strategic objectives.

At one point, Donald Trump’s ascendance to the US Presidency perhaps may have indicated to Moscow that change was afoot. Indeed, on the campaign trail, Trump on more than one occasion suggested that he would be open to partnering with Russia to combat the Islamic State. These intimations no doubt piqued Moscow’s interest, and it is worth pondering whether the Kremlin singled out Antonov to help facilitate such an alliance.

Antonov in the past has voiced his willingness to partner with the United States and its partners on counterterrorism. Yet suffice it to say that such overtures have tended to overlook how such cooperation might end up working at cross-purposes with US interests. More often than not, Antonov has shown himself to be more interested in elevating Russia’s operational profile than in seeking practical avenues for cooperation.

In October 2016, for example, Antonov voiced disappointment in the United States for not responding to Russian requests to coordinate air strikes in Syria: “A hundred times we asked our American colleagues, ‘where should we bomb?’ or ‘where should we not bomb?’ And the answer was always silence.” Never mind that by providing such intelligence to Moscow, Washington would risk exposing its partners in Free Syrian Army to bombardment by Russian warplanes.

Likewise, in an April 2015 interview with RIA Novosti, Antonov bemoaned the “counterproductive” attitude adopted by the United States and NATO towards cooperation with Russia in Afghanistan – despite the fact that Russia itself had already backed out of said cooperation in reaction to Western criticism of its military interventions in Ukraine and Syria.

Antonov’s appeals for cooperation thus betoken an inequitable partnership at best. Moreover, for all his diplomatic bona fides, Antonov presents a profound reputational risk in and of himself. Most notably, in May 2015 he was subjected to sanctions by the Government of Ukraine in connection with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent military intervention in Eastern Ukraine. As such, by engaging Russia via Antonov, the United States is all but certain to incur the indignation of Ukraine’s pro-Western government – which may be by design.

How Antonov might conduct himself as ambassador, of course, remains to be seen. Given his professional résumé, Antonov could be just the person to help bring about a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. However, if Antonov intends to continue exhibiting bad faith in his overtures to Washington – as he has demonstrably done in the past – then he faces a very steep incline indeed. Watch this space.

– Allen Maggard