Russia-Ukraine war fuels debate on mercenaries

Vappala Balachandran

Former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

On November 9, 2022, Pope Francis condemned the use of mercenaries in Ukraine, saying that they were inflicting “so much cruelty” on the population. The global media had then alleged that the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, was responsible for the atrocities. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wagner did not represent the state but had the right to work anywhere in the world as a private military contractor as long as it did not break the Russian law.

Yet, there were indications that the Wagner Group was officially treated on a par with the Russian government organs, if not preferentially. On March 14, the Russian Duma (Parliament) passed a law making it a crime to ‘discredit’ Wagner fighters. On March 30, Evan Gershkovich, an American national who is a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested in Yekaterinburg (Russia) for enquiring about the group.

In 2017, a video appeared of a Syrian man being decapitated by the Wagner Group for deserting the Syrian army. On March 16, news agency Reuters published a special interview of five Russian prisoners who had fought in Ukraine in return for a promise of freedom by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group.

Although the global media has been replete with Wagner’s activities, the arrest warrants issued on March 17 against Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova by the Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) mention only the forcible and illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

This is because of the incredibly lengthy definition of ‘mercenary’ in Article 1 of the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (1989). Briefly, a mercenary is not a member of the parties in conflict, nor part of their regular armed forces, but motivated only by private gain or specially recruited for undermining the territorial integrity of a state. If this definition is fully implemented, all ‘clandestine’ intelligence operations against another country would fall within its ambit.

When the Ukraine war started, Russia had alleged that NATO soldiers were fighting in Ukrainian army uniform. This was not proved, though there were instances of fighters of other nationalities joining the war on ‘sympathetic’ considerations. If such elements are permitted, it would be difficult to punish only the Wagner Group.

Besides, several countries have used clandestine agents to subvert other countries. The US, which has codified a legal definition of ‘covert operations’, would be the first target. Title 50 US Code defines covert operations as an activity to ‘influence political, economic or military conditions abroad’ where the US role would not be apparent. That is, perhaps, the reason why the ICC warrants have excluded the Wagner Group.

History tells us that mercenaries were used all over the world till the 1648 Westphalian Peace Treaty, which was signed after the 80 Years’ War (1568-1648) and 30 Years’ War (1618-1648). Around 20 per cent of the European population perished during these wars. Germany was totally devastated and plundered by thousands of mercenaries. These brutal wars brought home the need to regularise the law on wars.

In due course, the Westphalian Treaty, with its 128 clauses, guided the charters of the League of Nations (1920-1946) and the United Nations (UN) in 1945. Following this, the UN clearly prohibited the use of mercenaries based on the 1907 Hague Convention, Article 2 (paragraph 4) of the UN Charter (1945), Article 3 of the Geneva Convention (1949) and 1989 International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries.

India had an indirect experience with foreign mercenaries in 1981 during a failed coup against the then Seychelles President France-Albert Rene. The ‘Froth Blowers’ under former British-Indian Army Major Thomas Michael Hoare, known as ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare, took control of an Air India Harare-Bombay flight from the Mahe airport on November 25, 1981, and diverted it to Durban. In 1986, there was another coup attempt against Rene, after which he had requested the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to depute a team of Indian intelligence officials to upgrade their preventive security.

Yevgeny Prigozhin has been prominently in the news after it was found that the regular Russian army was not able to meet Putin’s strategic objectives. The court documents accessed by The Guardian (UK) indicate that his criminal history started in 1980 following a robbery in St Petersburg. For this and other crimes, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. After release in 1990, he became a hot dog vendor and later a food caterer. He worked his way up to provide food to high-class hotels and private groups.

Gradually, he came to know Putin and became an event manager through his company Concord, bagging government contracts. A photo of him serving wine to the then visiting US President, George W Bush, and his wife during a dinner hosted by Putin at Villa Lindström in 2006 was published by The Guardian.

According to The Guardian, in 2014 Russian Defence Ministry officials were asked to meet Prigozhin to give land to him at Molkino in southern Russia to train ‘volunteers’ who would have no official links to the Russian army. That was the beginning of the Wagner Group, which started with Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015.

Prigozhin was the subject of an FBI lookout notice in 2022 for his alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election from early 2014 to February 16, 2018, as “the primary funder of the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency”. On January 26, the US Treasury issued sanctions against the Wagner Group for being “a transnational criminal organisation”.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists in six continents, chose Prigozhin as the ‘2022 Person of the Year’ in ‘organised crime and corruption’ for being a mercenary leader who had become “perhaps the most conspicuous avatar of everything that is darkest about his motherland.”

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