Weltschau

I think the concept of mercenary should be known before starting to understand how Wagner was born. Therefore, we must first look at how mercenary companies came to be. It is seen that the process, which started with the employment of people such as retired military personnel working in the security field at the first stage of the emergence of mercenaries, was later expanded to include foreign nationals, stateless people, exiles, and prisoners who were expelled from military service or dismissed from security personnel.

In the historical process, the first example of modern mercenaries appeared with the French Foreign Legions on March 10, 1831. Following the establishment of Blackwater Private Military Company (PMC) in the USA on December 26, 1996, mercenary companies were widely established in various countries. After the USA, Erinys International Security Company was established in England in 2001, and Wagner Group was established in Russia in 2014 with the same principle. There are more than 50 companies to be found all around the world.

It was decided that the American and British companies, which have been serving since the Second Gulf War, would transfer their field duties to these companies in order to reduce the use and casualties of the military personnel of these countries in the war field. The vast majority of sensitive field missions have been distributed to these private companies, with uniformed soldiers relegated to the background (fixed positions in existing bases and gathering solid intelligence). In this way, the use of personnel with more conflict experience and who were accustomed to living conditions and fields outside the country was ensured. In this context, both the economic and logistical advantages of the application have led states to purchase services from these companies under contract.

Blackwater (now known as Academi), founded in 1996, and Wagner (now known as Convoy), founded in 2014, do not differ much from each other in terms of their working principles and the services they provide. All companies providing such services have a common structure. Basically, they also provide risk and crisis management consultancy, as well as training logistics services, close-range training, and security services for local police forces. Although both Blackwater and Erinys International Private in England and many other companies are supported both logistically and economically by the states in which they were established, Wagner’s biggest difference is that its physical presence and services are not approved by the Russian government, and it is stated that Wagner does not have any ties with the Russian state.

It is seen that Wagner, which has been operating in various African countries since its establishment in 2015, defined themselves as “Russian nationalists” during the Ukraine-Russia war. Stating that they came to Ukraine at the end of 2022, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that they did not have any ties with the Russian government and emphasized that they acted only with nationalist feelings.

After September 2022, Wagner began to form his mercenaries from convicted prisoners in a Russian prison in Uzbekistan. In a video recording released during the war, it is seen that he promised the prisoners that their crimes would be forgiven in exchange for them fighting in Ukraine for six months under the Wagner Group (NBC News, 2022; retrieved on 06.02.2024 at 17:00 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHFuD4irXto).

This situation constituted one of the breaking points in the war, and with the newly recruited personnel entering the war field, it was seen that international rules of war ethics were not followed. It has been observed that uncontrolled attacks on civilian structures, which are included in the international war ethics rules, attacks on civilians’ living spaces such as hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and nurseries, increased civilian deaths, as well as cases such as looting, rape, and robbery, have increased. In this sense, it has been observed that mercenaries acted inhumanely and contrary to the Geneva Convention in the field of operation.

While the war between Russia and Ukraine continued, a breaking point occurred in May 2022. The tension between Wagner’s founder, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and the Russian Minister of Defense occurred when the leader of the Wagner Group claimed that they had captured the Bakhmut region from Ukraine, but when the situation was denied by the Ukrainian government, the Wagner leader claimed that he was left alone from the Russian government in terms of both logistics and manpower. After this concrete incident, the Wagner group advanced close to Moscow and threatened Russia. The march stopped 200 km before Moscow, and the Wagner group went to Belarus as a whole. After the plane of Wagner’s founder, Prigozhin, crashed on August 23, 2023, and after the deaths of his senior officials, Konstantin Pikalov became the head of the group, and today Pikalov is in the Central African Republic.

Although the Wagner Group, which is in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, was actively involved at the beginning of the war, it went out of control after a certain point during the war and attacked civilian targets, thus acting against the rules of war ethics and constantly stating that it has no relations with the group that has activities contrary to the Geneva Convention. It has not been a factor affecting either domestic or foreign policy.

With the emergence of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7, 2023, the Russia-Ukraine war quickly fell off the world agenda. For this reason, there was a focus on other proxy powers in the Middle East region, and interest in Wagner’s activities decreased in both the regional and world press, and the flow of verifiable information stopped.

İkbal Sinemden Oylumlu

İkbal Sinemden Oylumlu was born in 1972 and completed his primary, secondary, and high school education in Istanbul. She graduated from Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Librarianship, Documentation, and Information Department in 1994. After working in the journalism and banking sectors for fifteen years, she returned to academic life in 2008. She graduated from the Yeditepe University Faculty of Letters. İkbal Sinemden, who started the Business, Technology, and Innovation Master’s program and the doctorate program at Yeditepe University’s Department of Political Science and International Relations in the same year, graduated in December 2022 with her doctoral thesis titled “The Effect of Democraticization on Public Diplomacy Strategies in the Crisis Period”. She currently teaches part-time at Istanbul Topkapı University.