Private traders
The draft law "On Private Military Security Companies" (PMSC) was submitted to the State Duma on October 22 by the Deputy from "Fair Russia" Gennady Nosovko. "Russia has long been able to make money by providing military companies with services to protect strategic facilities, VIPs, embassies, ship escorts - this is a range of services provided by many companies, for example, from the UK, America. According to various estimates, the capacity of this market was $ 200-350 billion. Russia could get some of this money, "Gennady Nosovko told the Deneg correspondent.
According to the draft law, PMSC is defined as a legal entity licensed by the FSB, providing relevant services to the state, individuals and legal entities on a contractual basis. Functions of PMSC are divided into military, security and consulting. The military attributed mine clearance, armed escort of sea vessels, as well as mediation and alternative resolution of armed conflicts outside the Russian Federation. The second group of services consists of security and escort of convoys, convoys and ships, inspection and identification of cargo. Consulting includes the training of personnel of the security forces, the assessment of the security of the facility, the work of military translators and consulting. PMSC is prohibited to carry out activities aimed at overthrowing governments or undermining constitutional order, undermining the territorial integrity of the state, seizing foreign territory. The main and fundamental difference between PMSCs and ordinary PSCs is that the license will provide the right to officially act outside the Russian Federation (with the consent, of course, of another state).
According to Gennady Nosovko, he began working on the idea of a law on PMSCs back in 2012, after MP Alexei Mitrofanov expressed it, and then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin supported it. “This initiative is in no way connected with the war in Ukraine,” explains Gennady Nosovko. “The draft law implies that even under a contract with a non-state customer, the Russian PMSC will not be able to work in a foreign country without permission from the government of the foreign state itself. I can’t even imagine that the government of Ukraine will hire or allow to hire a military company from Russia. Another thing might not have been this situation in Ukraine if we already had private military companies operating at the time of the crisis lstva Yanukovych - not being confident in his army, they could conclude an agreement with the Russian PMSCs. "
Foreign Guard Legion
The first clients of Russian PMSCs in theory should be large Russian companies that need to protect their facilities, vehicles and equipment abroad. As Gennady Nosovko noted, now such structures as Transneft or Gazprom, apparently, pay some foreign structures. The "money" sent a request to Gazprom and a number of other enterprises to find out by what forces their foreign objects are guarded. But it seems that this topic is so delicate that the answer (very low-key) came only from the gold mining company Nordgold, which has sites in Africa: "Nordgold has its own personnel to guard enterprises in Burkina Faso and French Guiana." The issue of security in Burkina Faso is by no means idle: the last time there has been restless, on October 30 there was a military coup.
According to the expert, the head of one of the largest Russian security agencies, who wished to remain anonymous, the scheme of organizing the protection of foreign industries is usually this: an agreement is concluded with a division of the local military security structure, which is completely reassigned to full-time security personnel of the client company. However, often imported and endowed weapons Russian citizens, of course, with the permission of the country's authorities, who are ready to meet the needs of the enterprise-investor. According to a source close to the LUKOIL security service, in 2012, its LUKOIL Overseas division in Iraq used the British firm to protect the West Qurna-2 field. The salary of the employees of this company, he said, was issued at the rate of £ 1 thousand per person per day.
There are also specialized Russian companies that provide services abroad, but so far, in the absence of a law, they are forced to conduct overseas contracts through firms registered in other countries. For example, RSB-groups is positioned as a Russian private military company. In the list of her proposals, among other things, are sea and land operations. In addition to the Moscow office, RSB-Group has an office in Senegal (it oversees West Africa and the Middle East), and has representative offices in Sri Lanka, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus.
According to Oleg Krinitsyn, General Director of RSB-group, his company provides military services abroad from 2011. “What is not prohibited is allowed,” says Krinitsyn. “RSB has security companies with weapon licenses registered outside of Russia. And Russian RSB employees work abroad in accordance with the legislation and the requirements of the state of our security groups. Semi-automatic weapons are used caliber 7,62 mm, 5,56 mm, body armor, thermal imagers, night vision devices, satellite communications, if necessary, we can use UAVs. "
One of the first foreign operations of RSB-groups is the protection of ships in the Gulf of Aden from Somali pirates. Krinitsyn does not name any specific customers, he only indicates that they are Russian companies from the EU countries, as well as from Southeast Asia and Africa.
Private military companies can challenge national armies of some countries.
Private military company
Personnel Turnover ($
million)
Country Number
military service
military
costs
($ million)
DynCorp International (USA) 25 000 Austria 3 700
Academi Holdings (previously
Blackwater and Xe Services; USA) 20 000 800 Finland 22 000 3596
Aegis Defense Services
(UK) 3 500 Latvia 96 5
Northbridge services group
(Dominican Republic) 2 000 Guyana 51 1
Sources: Washingtontechnology.com; company reports; media ratings; The Military Balance 2013.
From the amount to the prison
On October 24, 2014, Russia was first sentenced under article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - mercenarism. The leaders of Hong Kong-registered Slavonic Corps ("Slavic Corps") Vadim Gusev and Evgeny Sidorov received three years each for the recruitment and use of Russian mercenaries in the armed conflict in Syria. The Slavic Corps was there under a tripartite contract in which the Syrian Ministry of Energy and a certain energy company acted as two other parties. It was assumed that the Russians (more than 250 people) will protect oil fields in the area of the city of Deir ez-Zor. Doubts in accordance with the real tasks stated by the fighters arose after the issue of weapons: in addition to machine guns, the fighters received machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-aircraft mounts, mortars, Tanks and BMP. The technique was 1950-1960, but in working condition, and for security functions it seemed somewhat redundant. According to the fighters, the leaders of Slavonic Corps planned to bring the number of corps to 2 thousand people. During the march from the training camp to the place where tasks were completed, the convoy was forced to engage in battle with units of the Islamic State. In Russia, FSB officers met mercenaries right at the airport. A criminal case was instituted against the leaders of Slavonic Corps, and ordinary soldiers (half of them are Kuban Cossacks) went through the case as witnesses.
Today, if you type in "how much they pay" on Google, the hints of the most popular queries pop up in the following order: "at McDonalds," "donors," and "militiamen." As we see, our citizens are not averse to war for money. If we talk about those who are fighting in Ukraine on the side of Novorossia, the data on their incomes are very contradictory. There are rumors about one-time payments for the "trip to the Donbass" - from 150 thousand to 400 thousand rubles. However, Oleg Krinitsyn believes that these figures are greatly overestimated: “Militiamen and volunteers in the Donbas are fighting for the whole idea. Of course, they, like everyone, need to support their families, pay loans, buy food for themselves ... They are not public security and some money in the amount of 25-40 thousand rubles a month, but this is not wages, this is money for family life, it’s no secret that someone took leave at his own expense, but someone he quit his job and came to Donbass to help his brothers from Novorossiya. "
In the private army of the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region Igor Kolomoisky, according to Forbes, salaries are higher - from $ 1260 per month. In the "army Kolomoisky" two battalions of special forces - "Dnepr-1" and "Dnepr-2", as well as two battalions of territorial defense. However, formally, the territorial defense battalions are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and Dnepr-1 and Dnepr-2 are the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In the same place where professionals with special training are required, and not just a course of a young volunteer, they pay even more. “Employees of US private military companies in Iraq were paid $ 300 per day in the green zone in Baghdad, in the field, outside the green zone, $ 500, while protecting the convoy, the columns, $ 800. Our employees receive on average, $ 150-200 per day, plus insurance for $ 250 thousand, plus all logistics, weapons, ammunition, equipment and equipment at the company's expense, "says Oleg Krinitsyn.
High pay in hot spots is caused not only by military risks, but also by health risks — the likelihood of catching Ebola, Dengue fever and a bunch of exotic diseases. And, of course, the risk of breaking the fragile line separating the concept of protection from "mercenary", "illegal possession and use of weapons", and "exceeding self-defense measures." Whether a private army soldier will be considered a mercenary depends on the tasks he performs: if they are purely security, not attacking, then, according to Oleg Krinitsyn, he has no problems with the law. "It is important that he was in the country legally and that he had the weapon in his hands in accordance with the law of the host country. The security company that invited him to work is responsible for this," adds Krinitsyn. any of the parties in a state, not being its citizen, then naturally will be accused and brought under many criminal clauses. "
The impolite people
According to Oleg Krinitsyn, if the law on PMSC is adopted, by and large, nothing fundamentally new will come to this sphere: “The Russian future PMSCs were late for this market on 40-50. It’s very difficult to win a place under the sun, and without the support of their state. In our case, the state is in no hurry to expand its political and physical influence abroad. And the license itself will not do anything - it will be recognized only in Russia. Those who need it have been working for a long time without this law. now is the time I am local wars - this is a field for PMSCs, but in a pure form, PSTCs, as they exist in the West, are impossible in Russia, as a result we can only have some sluggish monopoly structure a la FSUE Okhrana. " Theoretically, the adoption of the law will remove the long-standing, starting with Vietnam and Korea, the problem of legalizing the participation of regular units in foreign wars: the place of unidentified "polite people" sent to help one or another of the Allied friends, will be taken by employees of legitimate PMSCs.
The explanatory note to the draft law on PMSC states that in connection with the reform of the armed forces and the reduction of personnel, the establishment of private military security companies will open employment opportunities for former military personnel. If the law is not adopted, it "will lead to the washing out of military specialists from the country and the military lag of the Russian Federation from the world level."
"We have a lot of specialists being fired due to the reduction of the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The military, who no longer knows how, is recruited by companies, including foreign ones, that can go against the interests of our state. In Russia, unclaimed specialists with military experience now amount to 1 million the person ", - the deputy Nosovko makes comments.
After the end of the conflict in Ukraine, obviously, there will be even more such people. It is also well known that in Russia there is neither a working system of psychological rehabilitation for those who returned from wars, nor a system for their employment. Last week, for example, they called the alleged murderers of two traffic police officers in the Solnechnogorsky district of the Moscow region - according to the investigation, these were volunteers from Donbass who arrived on vacation.
The largest military companies
BUSINESS FORMATION
More and more states are trying to shift some of the security functions to business. Moreover, military operations are in private hands.
The first private military companies (PMCs, or PMC, Private Military Company) of the modern type appeared at the end of the 1980s. The global market for military services formed in 1990 after the end of the Cold War. His rise is associated with the tendency to reduce and professionalize the armed forces and the intention to transfer the maximum core functions to outsourcing. PMCs exist in the context of a large-scale phenomenon known as “security privatization”. In many countries of the world, the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence is eroded by attracting private players to the sector.
The global market for security services grew from 2007 to 2014 in the year from $ 138,6 billion to $ 218,4 billion. The main share belongs to multidisciplinary private military security companies (PMSC) and private security companies (Private Security Company, PSC, analogue of Russian chop). The leading player in this market is the British multi-disciplinary holding G4S (securities of the company are traded on the London Stock Exchange). He has an annual turnover of $ 12,3 billion and is the second private employer in the world after the Wal-Mart retail chain. G4S employs 620 thousand people in 120 countries.
A powerful impetus to the PMC industry was reported by the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The number of contracted personnel (civilian and military) in Iraq in 2007-2008 exceeded 150 thousand people. At the beginning of 2013, there were 108 in Thousands of people involved in Afghanistan, including 18 in thousands of PMCs; at the same time, the number of US military personnel was 67,5 thousand. In total, the Pentagon spent $ 2007 billion on private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan from 160. The largest global players in private military business have mastered the contracts. In terms of the number of personnel and the cost of providing it, these enterprises are comparable to many national armies (see table).
DynCorp International (USA) was founded in 1946 year. In 2010, Cerberus Capital Management bought American DynCorp for $ 1,5 billion. According to a report of the US Military Contracts Committee, the company received $ 7,4 billion from $ 139,2 billion allocated by the US budget in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2002-2011. . In particular, DynCorp provided security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and was responsible for the police training and education program, as well as the construction of military bases and logistics.
Academi Holdings (USA) was established in 1997 year. She previously worked under the Blackwater and Xe Services brands. The company received scandalous fame in 2007 year because of the shooting of civilians in Iraq by employees. Since 2003, Academi has been involved in the security of US diplomatic missions and infrastructure facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The total amount of completed government contracts is estimated at $ 1,4 billion. In June 2014, Academi merged with another well-known US PMC Triple Canopi into the holding Constellis Group.
Aegis Defense Services (UK) opened in 2002. In 2004, the company signed several life-cycle contracts for the maintenance and security of Iraq’s reconstruction projects, by which, by 2011, it earned at least $ 1 billion. In 2011, the US State Department entered into a contract with the company for $ 497 million to guard the American embassy in Kabul . Aegis Defense Services' largest private clients are oil companies operating in Africa.
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