Defining Terms & Probing the Edges of Russia’s Proxy Strategies

In order to understand the role of Russian PMSCs in Russian proxy warfare strategies it is necessary to define what is meant by a PMSC and proxy warfare. Given the deliberate and extensive use of deception, definitions can be slippery. This study focuses only on groups that provide operational or logistical support to Russian military expeditionary campaigns, military-technical advisory missions outside of Russia, or a blend of the two, as appears more often to be the case.¹

The literature on the privatization of security is voluminous, and so too is the array of terms used to refer to private security organizations.² The general consensus view defines organizations that primarily provide semi-passive protective services, such as unarmed site security, police advice and training, and intelligence as private security contractors (PSCs). Organizations that provide armed operational support in armed conflict settings, such as logistical and training support for operational campaigns and military advisory missions, are private military security contractors or PMSCs.³

The groups this paper addresses as Russian PMSCs fall into the latter category. Our frame of analysis is primarily based on precepts contained in the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICoC) and the Montreux Document, a set of international protocols designed to guide best practices for private security organizations.⁴ Published in 2008 by the International Committee of the Red Cross and government of Switzerland, the Montreux Document reaffirms state obligations under applicable international law and sets forth non-binding standards and practices for business entities that provide military or security services.

Known as the “Swiss Initiative,” the Montreux Document reinforces customary norms under international humanitarian law (IHL) that ascribe responsibility for PMSC actions to contracting states. ICoC was developed in a follow-on process supported by the Swiss government and driven in large part by representatives of the PMSC industry, notably the U.S. International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) and the British Association of Private Security Companies. Driven in part by the controversies that erupted over U.S. contractor practices in Afghanistan and Iraq, such as the killing of civilians by Blackwater employees in Iraq in 2007 and later legal battles lodged in 2009 in connection to that incident in Nisour Square in Baghdad, PMSC industry leaders pushed the code of conduct initiative with a view to building bridges with the aid community in the field as well as getting ahead of the regulatory curve.⁵

Central to the Montreux Document’s normative framework is an emphasis on the specific roles PMSCs take on and the legal structures under which PMSCs operate. Additional guidance on the Montreux protocols expressly states that whether PMSCs can be treated as civilians is dependent on their employment status and how they perform their functions.⁶ In most cases, individual PMSC operators are treated as civilians where bilateral status of forces or military-technical agreements or other local laws on security actors apply. In the rare cases, where PMSC employees are “incorporated into the armed forces of a state or form groups or units under a command responsible to a party to an armed conflict” they do not enjoy protection of civilian status.⁷ Fifty-six states are signatories to the Montreux Document, including the United States and Ukraine, but neither Russia nor Syria are signatories.⁸

A related definitional question is: What distinguishes PMSCs from mercenaries? This study draws heavily on works about private security widely cited in the English language as authoritative, including Deborah Avant, Sean McFate and our colleague, Peter Singer, to address these questions.⁹ Although each variously uses the terms PSCs, PMSCs, and private military companies (PMCs), all three point out the differences between those types of privatized security organizations and mercenaries, which are defined under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions as any individual or group recruited abroad to fight in armed hostilities by a third party that is not a direct party to the conflict and is “motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain.”¹⁰

When it comes to Russian PMSCs, many of the contractors could arguably be categorized as mercenaries. The broad array of fighters from a variety of countries, who have joined conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere under the banner of PMSCs, suggests financial interest almost certainly plays a role for some. However, our analysis forms no broad conclusions as to whether Russian PMSC operators can be strictly categorized as mercenaries.

This is because the mercenary tagline fails to capture the bigger picture of the role Russian PMSCs play as a strategic tool in conflicts that Russia is effectively a party to. It also fails to describe how Putin’s promotion of the “Russian World” ideal has influenced the interests of many who join Russian PMSCs.¹¹ They are neither volunteer private civilians nor entirely or even primarily financially motivated mercenaries. They are motivated as much by the revival of Russian nationalism and romanticism about Russia’s special forces as they are by their own economic and social displacement in wider Russian society.

Above all, however, they are tools of state enterprises looking to capture new markets for the Russian state. As detailed below, substantial evidence suggests that the organizational structure of PMSCs should be categorized as state-backed combatants. In addition to contracting with Russian state enterprises, Russian PMSCs often draw from an active reserve of veteran recruits from special forces, or spetsnaz, units whose core mission sets include influence campaigns, conducting reconnaissance and sabotage, and undertaking lethal targeting operations. They typically operate under cover in tandem with other surrogate forces deep behind enemy lines on special assignments designated by Russia’s military intelligence, counterterrorism, and national emergency services.

It is clear those functions, which sit outside the realm of PSCs, can be ascribed to the Wagner Group and several other Russian PMSCs with overlapping ties to the same clients, contracting entities, managers, brokers, and financiers as Wagner. Such forces have been ideal for pushing the limits of norms around non-intervention, long a central pillar of Russian foreign policy dating back to when Putin’s predecessor at the KGB, Yevgeny Primakov, was still pulling the levers of Russia’s state security architecture.

If PSCs are not entirely categorizable as mercenaries, what framework best captures the role of Russian PMSCs? They may at times fulfill traditional PSC roles based on circumstances, but they have also fought in offensive operations alongside the local forces that they have trained. Russian PMSCs, in this respect, are at once force multipliers and agents of deception. This report argues that they are best understood as agents of Russia’s proxy warfare strategy, a strategy that relies on the sponsorship of conventional or irregular forces that lie outside the constitutional order of the state.¹² While the Russian legal system regarding the activity of PMSCs is often deliberately opaque, Russian PMSCs do not fit wholly under the Russian constitutional structure.

Technically, Article 359 of Russia’s 1996 Criminal Code prohibits Russian citizen civilians from participating in armed conflicts abroad for material reward.¹³ Parliamentary representatives in Russia’s state Duma have in recent years tried but failed to update national laws to permit PMSCs to operate in an expeditionary capacity. Some Russia scholars suggest parliamentary resistance to legalization of PMSCs reflects the fear of some political leaders that privatization of military force could see a return to the “bad old days” of the 1990s, when the prospect of a successful military coup loomed large.¹⁴ Others, such as Columbia University scholar Kimberly Marten, posit that the quasi-legal status of PMSCs is a tool that allows Putin and relevant security agencies such as the FSB and GRU to manage foreign policy objectives outside formal institutional channels, like parliament.¹⁵ Both these reasons seem plausible.

Whatever the explanation, the unique status of Russian PMSCs in this legal gray zone suggests that Wagner and other related affiliates do not fall under the standard chain of command overseen by the military or other constitutionally mandated security organs. Absent any legislative oversight or concrete means of enforcing rules about PMSCs, the Kremlin can exert pressure on oligarchs, like Prigozhin, when something surreptitious needs to be done expediently in Russia’s zones of interest abroad. Since most decrees pertaining to the status of Russian forces operating abroad are classified, it would seem then that PMSCs are proxies at least in name.

The classification of Russian PMSCs as proxies does not absolve the Russian state of responsibility for PMSC actions under international law. If anything, the historical roots of PMSCs in the Kremlin’s official state security apparatus, their organizational structures, their contractual missions, their contractual arrangements with Russian state enterprises, and the centrality of Russian PMSCs in the combat training and equipment of local proxies in conflict zones, such as Ukraine and Syria, grants Russia an extraordinary ability to extend its military reach inside sovereign nations, and may generate corresponding legal responsibilities.