In Syria, Russia’s Wagner Group Cut Its Teeth

In his youth, Yevgeny Prigozhin spent nine years in prison for robbery and fraud. After his release, he claimed he sold hot dogs until he had enough money and connections to enter the restaurant business. In 1997, he and a partner opened a restaurant in St. Petersburg that one client in particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin, came to enjoy when he was still prime minister. That special relationship launched the restaurateur into the lucrative world of government contracting. Prigozhin’s companies provided Russian schools and the army with meals.

Then, in 2014, Prigozhin became a purveyor of both meals and men. On the heels of Moscow’s invasion of Crimea, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) was sponsoring small bands of mercenaries and volunteers to fight in eastern Ukraine on behalf of the Luhansk People’s Republic, which had declared itself independent. Prigozhin wanted in and linked up with Dmitry Utkin, a career soldier with the call sign “Wagner,” a name that would eventually become a catchall term for the companies and entities connected to both men. To insiders, however, Wagner Group was simply “the company.”

Prigozhin’s men proved themselves an effective fighting force on the front and brutal enforcers in the rear, where they were responsible for the assassination of at least one wayward separatist leader in Luhansk. Nonetheless, following the 2015 Minsk II cease-fire agreement in Ukraine, the demand for Prigozhin and Utkin’s mercenaries in Donbas decreased. Units disbanded. “The company,” or what we now call Wagner Group, could have easily disappeared, as well. Prigozhin, however, was different. The entrepreneur was looking to build a private military company like the United States’ Blackwater. Luckily for him, Russia was about to intervene in Syria.

When the Arab Spring reached Syria in early March 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime quashed protests with shocking brutality. As protests morphed into civil war, however, Russia and the West were keen to wait on the sidelines. Moscow maintained dialogue with the Syrian opposition. Across the Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration warned Assad that any use of chemical weapons would lead to consequences.

That summer, French and American ambassadors to Syria visited rebellious Hama and met with protesters. A Syrian oligarch named Mohammed Jaber sent buses packed with regime loyalists to storm the embassies in revenge. Jaber also organized pro-regime thugs, or shabiha, into popular resistance committees.

Mohammed and his brother, Ayman, had a long history of working for the Assads. Ayman Jaber married into Assad’s family, which opened the door to kickbacks in Syria’s energy, iron, and steel industry, while Mohammed, a former general in the Syrian Arab Army, had defense contracts. Like the Assad family, and many of the regime’s elite, the Jabers were Alawites, a religious minority distinct from, yet often associated with, Shiism.

At the end of July 2011, Assad sent the Syrian army to crush the uprising in Hama. But Assad’s brutality and deliberate policies of sectarianism led to desertions. To shore up ranks, Iran started sending men. Meanwhile, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—in competition with each other—began quietly intervening on behalf of the rebels.

Assad lost significant territory. In August 2013, the regime issued a decree enabling oil companies and other businesses to hire mercenaries for the protection of assets. The new law presented the Jaber brothers with an opportunity.

---

Mercenarism and PMCs are illegal according to Article 359 of Russia’s 1996 Criminal Code, a reflection of that decade’s rampant corruption, violence, and organized crime. But the war on terror had been a boon for the security industry, allowing Russian contractors to work for Western companies guarding facilities and convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan. The piracy crisis off the coast of Somalia further opened the industry to Russian entrepreneurs. Large firms hired the Moran Group and others to guard their ships and train their crews.

No one knows for sure who connected Jaber with the Moran Group. Russian journalists contend Syria’s ambassador to Russia and the Russian security service, the FSB, brokered the deal. On the other hand, the Moran Group’s aptly surnamed head, Vyacheslav Kalashnikov, was a former FSB officer. Seeking guidance from old colleagues, insiders contend, would have been a natural move.

In 2012, Moran’s deputy head, Vadim Gusev, registered a new entity, Slavonic Corps Limited, in Hong Kong. And when Assad legalized the use of mercenaries, the recruitment drive for Slavonic Corps was already underway. One of the men to sign up was named Andrei. After serving in the military, Andrei wanted to join one of the maritime security companies. He spent time on internet forums, where veterans and fans of military affairs discussed PMCs and potential contracts. When he heard of a chance to guard gas facilities somewhere abroad, he signed up right away. “It was a chance to see the world,” he told me on the phone, over a decade later.

In August 2013, when Andrei prepared to deploy, the Assad regime launched a devastating sarin gas attack on part of Damascus, killing up to 1,400 people. The attack put the Obama administration’s red line on the use of chemical weapons to the test. The president was loath to engage in another Middle Eastern intervention. The United States had finally withdrawn from Iraq, and NATO’s recent intervention in Libya only brought further instability. After the U.K. Parliament voted against intervening, the president turned to Congress for approval. The Americans were wavering, and when then-Secretary of State John Kerry stated Assad could avoid airstrikes if he handed over all chemical weapons, Russian diplomats jumped in. Moscow called for Assad to hand over his stocks of chemical weapons, thus relieving the United States of its need to act.

While Moscow collaborated with the United States within a U.N. framework on the handover of chemical weapons, Slavonic Corps touched down. Andrei joined the muzhiky, which consisted of Moran Group employees led by Utkin. Another unit consisted of two hundred Cossacks, descendants of escaped serfs who settled in the Russian Empire’s southern borders.

The corps made their way to a base in Syria’s Latakia region—the home of the Assad family and a regime stronghold. They relaxed on the beach posing with AK-47s. The mood shifted, though, when Assad’s military delivered heavy weapons for a trip to Deir ez-Zor, a city in the east’s energy-rich, Islamic State-held desert. Watching infantry fighting vehicles roll in, some of the mercenaries grew nervous and threatened to mutiny. The plan was to guard oil fields, they said, not capture them. But Gusev threatened to withhold $4,000 from any refusenik.

When the group turned northeast on the road to Deir ez-Zor, they drove straight into an Islamic State ambush.

A Syrian unit was engaged first. The Cossacks fell in second when they tried to circumvent the ambush to the left of the road. Andrei’s company, which had trailed the convoy, took up positions along the road to prevent the insurgents from flanking them. After 18 hours of battle, insurgents kept coming, and Slavonic Corps risked encirclement.

“Utkin understood that with the weapons and men we had, there was no way we were going to break through. Help wasn’t on the way,” Andrei recalled.

A sandstorm, rare for that time of year, swept through the battlefield. Visibility dropped to zero, and Utkin told his men to hold hands and form a chain. He managed to lead them out, and the Cossacks followed suit. Six members of Slavonic Corps were wounded, two seriously. Had it not been for the sandstorm, the convoy may well have been destroyed.

The mercenaries limped back to Latakia. Jaber was furious with the corps’ performance. The mercenaries knew the Kremlin wouldn’t be pleased, either. In September, Assad had agreed to hand over his stocks of chemical weapons, allowing Russia to position itself to the West as a responsible, neutral actor. Slavonic Corps’ embarrassing mission, conducted alongside pro-Assad forces, suggested that Russia was secretly backing Assad. On Oct. 28, two planes brought Slavonic Corps to Moscow, where they were met by the FSB. Everyone was interrogated and then released, but in November, Gusev and another leader became the first citizens to be charged with Article 359 on mercenarism. They were sentenced to three years.

Coming down so hard on a mission that the FSB, MoD, or parts of either may have approved in the first place allowed the Kremlin to distance itself from the PMC. It would be wrong, however, to call their Syrian adventure a failure: Despite being ambushed by an overwhelming force, thanks to Utkin and other commanders, no one was killed. The mission proved that, in the right context, with the right team and equipment, mercenaries could be useful for far more than guard duty. Those lessons would soon be put to the test in Donbas.

---

In 2015, Russia formally intervened in Syria. Kirill Semenov, a Russian expert on the Middle East and North Africa, argues instead that Syria was a way for Russia to reopen diplomatic channels with the Americans following events in Ukraine. The West had hit Russia hard with sanctions after the annexation of Crimea and covert intervention in Donbas. Intervention in Syria would force the Americans to cooperate on an issue important to them: defeating the Islamic State.

The first group of Wagner fighters arrived in September. We don’t know whose decision it was to send the company there. An MoD source believes Prigozhin took the initiative, securing approval from Putin himself. Wagner brought mostly instructors and tank specialists to Homs. Marat Gabidullin, together with other contractors, touched down later that month. Marat had served with Wagner at the tail end of their mission in Luhansk. The first mission in Syria, Marat remembers, was an effort to sell Wagner’s services. “Not everyone in the MoD was aware of our activities in eastern Ukraine,” Marat said.

For around a month, the company trained the Desert Hawks, the Jaber brothers’ local PMC. Then, Wagner forces started engaging the enemy in Latakia. But soon a guided shell hit the artillery tent of Marat’s brigade, killing nine. The MoD panicked; there was no plan yet how to hide casualties. That October, the generals told the company to pack its bags.

They were not in Russia for long. After October, Russian and Syrian military planners recognized Assad’s ragtag forces couldn’t retake territory from more motivated rebels. The decision was made to consider Wagner a mercenary force and not include their casualties in official statistics. There was little appetite among the Russian public in sending Russian soldiers to distant Syria.

Indeed, despite their continued illegality, mercenaries proved useful in Donbas as forces that were deniable on the international stage. In Syria, mercenaries were a deniable force to the public back home. The deaths of contractors would be far quieter, a lesson learned from America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Outsourcing war to contractors lowered the political costs of intervention.

In January 2016, Marat and fellow mercenaries touched down again. He and 300 other mercenaries were to embed with Ayman and Mohammed Jaber’s Desert Hawks and launch an offensive on rebel-held territory in Latakia.

It seems an unlikely coincidence that first Slavonic Corps, then Prigozhin and Utkin’s company, signed deals with the Jaber brothers. That the MoD forced the company to leave Syria in the fall of 2015 suggests Prigozhin was looking for backdoor entries into the country, perhaps through a local intermediary. Utkin’s role as a commander in Slavonic Corps placed him in a position to either know Mohammed Jaber personally or know of him.

Prigozhin’s agreement with the MoD was informal, which left him vulnerable to the whims of competing Kremlin insiders. He needed more touchpoints in Syria; if the company was indispensable to multiple decision-makers, within both the Russian and the Syrian government, they could lobby against any MoD change of heart.

Since Utkin last saw the Jabers in 2013, the brothers had grown their PMC to an estimated 5,000 men. Among the Syrian military, the Hawks had the reputation of an effective fighting force. There were grumblings, however, that the Jabers were looking to carve out their own fief in Latakia.

Utkin deployed his most talented commander, Alexander “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, and Marat’s company to work with the Desert Hawks. Almost immediately, Wagner ran into issues. The Hawks frequently refused to carry out orders and were quick to retreat. There was a sense among the company’s commanders that the Syrians were taking advantage of the Russians.

One morning in February 2016, when the Hawks and Wagner forces reached the outskirts of Kinsabba, a small town in northeast Latakia, the rebels attacked. The Hawks received the order to retreat, but Ratibor, fed up with the lack of progress, told his men they would defend their positions.

After the shelling and rocket attacks died down, Marat caught a few hours of rest. The group knew another attack would come at dawn. Sure enough, a voice crackled over the radio in the early morning—more movement from the rebels. Worse, the Hawks had disappeared. The next thing Marat heard on the radio was that Chup—a well-respected commander—had taken a direct hit from a mortar.

A few days later, the Hawks and Wagner made their move on Kinsabba. On the first attempt, they sat exposed in a few abandoned buildings, waiting for their Syrian compatriots to begin the assault. The Syrians, however, started looting what little was left of the village. On the second attempt, the platoon came under fire before finding shelter in woods to the east. When they finally had Kinsabba in view, Ratibor saw outfitted pickups at the town’s entrance. He called over the radio. The Russian general overseeing the operation told him the town was already liberated by Assad regime forces. They forgot to inform the mercenaries.

In March 2016, the MoD tasked Wagner and the Hawks with taking Palmyra from the Islamic State. Unlike al Qaeda’s al-Nusra, the Islamic State was, as Marat put it, “strong, disciplined, well-equipped, and held death in contempt.” The company’s first assault on Islamic State positions in the mountains was pushed back. But taking Palmyra would prove invaluable for the nascent PMC. Utkin pushed his commanders to make quick progress.

With Palmyra in sight, Utkin called company commanders—Ratibor, Nik, Marat, and the others—into a meeting. His plan was to descend into Palmyra and provide support for the Syrian army and Hezbollah forces pushing into the city. The next day, Utkin’s men, with artillery and support from MoD helicopter fire, assaulted the Islamic State’s positions along the west. The enemy was overwhelmed by Wagner’s assault.

A few months later, the Mariinsky Theatre put on a heavily televised performance in Palmyra’s ancient Roman amphitheater. Back in Moscow, Marat and others received their medals for bravery in a secret ceremony, but they were left with a sour taste in their mouth. The company claims 40 dead and 120 wounded in the campaign. Yet the Russian generals took all the credit for the victory.

Prigozhin and Utkin’s PMC was only 2 years old, but already Wagner had developed an esprit de corps. Yes, they were mercenaries, but they were also Russian patriots; men, in many respects, more willing to fight and die for the motherland than regular soldiers. For Prigozhin, the MoD’s decision must have been infuriating.

The company was a means for him to rise through the ranks of Putin’s regime. That would be difficult if Putin didn’t even know Wagner’s contributions. To stay on Putin’s radar, Prigozhin and the company needed to start exerting a degree of independence from the MoD.

---

It was a humiliating loss. Wagner was promptly needed back in Syria. This time, though, Prigozhin signed a deal directly with the Syrian government, bypassing the Jaber brothers. The Jabers had grown too powerful, prompting other Syrian oligarchs, even the Assad regime itself, to worry. “We could control over 60 percent of the country, if we were allowed to,” Mohammed Jaber told a Der Spiegel journalist in 2017. Shortly thereafter, his men stopped Assad’s presidential motorcade at gunpoint. That was the final straw. Assad put Ayman Jaber under house arrest, while Mohammed fled to Russia. The Desert Hawks were disbanded and incorporated into the Syrian army.

The new agreement with the Syrian government allowed Prigozhin’s company, Evro-Polis, to recapture oil fields from “illegal armed groups” on behalf of Assad’s government. In exchange, the regime would reimburse Evro-Polis its costs, and the company would receive a 25 percent share of the liberated oil fields’ profit.

The profit-sharing deal structure was not necessarily Prigozhin’s idea. The Jaber brothers had also reportedly inked a similar deal with Assad in the Badia region. Nonetheless, the agreement provided legal cover for the redeployment of Prigozhin’s PMC to Syria.

Perhaps, Prigozhin and Utkin were thinking at the time, the deal with the Assads would hedge some of Wagner’s financial reliance on the MoD. Independence, though, would prove a double-edged sword and put Prigozhin’s men on a collision course with the United States.