The Wagner Group isn’t Russia’s only private army

Allowing a psychopath to form a private army of violent criminals may not, on reflection, have been Vladimir Putin’s greatest idea. But Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutinous Wagner Group is by no means the only private army operating in Russia. Over the past couple of months no fewer than five armies have been fighting on Russian soil. Only one of them, the official Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, is directly subordinate to the Kremlin.

The 12,000-strong semi-irregular forces of Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, officially known as the 141st Special Motorised Regiment but more famous as the ‘Kadyrovsty’, are effectively the Praetorian Guard of a regional leader. The 25,000-strong Wagner Group have shown themselves ready and willing to follow their leader into open rebellion. And on the other side, two Ukraine-backed groups of insurgent Russian citizens known as the Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL) and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) have taken and held villages in Russia’s Belgorod Province in a series of cross-border incursions.

But the list does not end there. Gazprom, the state-owned energy corporation, has also formed no fewer than five private armies known as Fakel (Torch), Potok (Torrent), Plamya (Flame), Alexander Nevsky, and Redut (Redoubt). Independent investigative site Gulagu.net and the Molfar open-source intelligence group have alleged that several Kremlin-connected billionaires, including the railway rolling stock magnate Andrei Bokarev, the international oil trader Gennadiy Timchenko and the metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska, have been involved in financing private military companies (PMCs). (Deripaska denies any connection to the Kremlin and says he has never supported or financed any PMCs.) Even Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu founded a smaller PMC named Patriot in 2018 which is currently fighting in Ukraine.

In Crimea, the Russian-installed local leader Sergey Aksyonov runs a military group called Convoy.