“Thugs with cleavers at the ready. A year of radical change in Syria

See the world, visit unusual countries, meet wonderful people and shoot them, earning a lot of money along the way - the work of a mercenary in a private military company (PMC) is very attractive at first glance. But in fact, everything is much more complicated: some volunteers chasing a long ruble can return home in coffins, while others do not smell gunpowder at all. Special correspondent Alexandra Wigraiser, on condition of anonymity, spoke with an employee of one of the world's largest private military companies and found out why the semi-legendary Wagner PMC cannot be called a private military company, how the "soldiers of fortune" live and what they are afraid of.

Lenta.ru: What do you know about Wagner PMC? How and for whom does it work? Why is their existence allowed in Russia?

All information on the surface. Everyone knows where their Moscow office is located. Yes, this is the structure of Evgeny Prigozhin. Why is this private military company (PMC) allowed to operate? It's hard for me to understand. I can assume that it's all about the relationship of a particular person with a particular president. This practice has no world analogues.

If people are fighting for the country, then these should not be “green”, “yellow” or “blue” men, but military personnel. If people are involved in private security, training or risk analysis, then it could be a private military company. But PMCs cannot fully participate in hostilities. Because PMC employers and the state can have completely different goals. The state, for example, sets some global goals, and a particular businessman is interested in capturing an oil plant. And from whom? The Kurds!

What's wrong with the Kurds? Aren't they just as much of an adversary as any other in Syria and Iraq?

Kurds - the enemy?! Trust me, anyone who has worked in Iraq is praying for the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan, for example, looks like an oasis in the middle of the desert. This is an amazing place! The sweetest, kindest people without any signs of Islamic fundamentalism. Girls on the streets wear T-shirts and Capri pants, alcohol is sold everywhere, whiskey is openly advertised on the street! These are the most normal, most adequate, most rational allies of any adequate forces in the Middle East.

Offending the Kurds, fighting the Kurds is the worst thing imaginable. Moreover, the Kurds have a great attitude towards Russia, they love it. And now the activity of some chefs leads to the fact that the whole of Kurdistan (the Syrian, Turkish, Iraqi and Iranian parts of it) simply turn away from the partner. Come to Kurdistan and see: they work there, there are Russian guys from PMCs. They do normal work, get normal money. There is cooperation with local security companies. They do a good job there without any "law on PMCs", without presidential chefs.

Kurds have a great attitude towards Russia. In Syria, at the suggestion of some close-minded supply manager, a political crisis is taking place, hundreds of Russian people are dying. This is insanity that needs to be stopped. I have worked in this area all my life and I can say what is happening behind the sign of "PMC Wagner" - this is not normal, this should not exist.

Is it possible, in this case, to call "PMC Wagner", so to speak, the Russian army in a different "clothes"?

This is not the Russian army. There is after all the well-known word "mercenaries". Any army officer is limited by certain laws and command hierarchies. And the Wagner... They just don't have the brakes that a huge inertial war machine has. Any order in the official structure would go through a huge number of instances - yes, stupid, but instances. And the Russian army is not going to fight the Kurds. Then no.

Another sad side: the personnel of the Wagner, to put it mildly, is of a completely different quality. And further on the points: the equipment and weapons are disgusting, the level of training is low, the effectiveness of command also leaves much to be desired - people are constantly dying there. This is well known in our circles. And therefore, the attitude of regular Russian soldiers and officers towards them is appropriate.

But there is another point that cannot be ignored. When a Russian pilot dies, he is buried with honors, broadcast on television, you write panegyrics and obituaries in your newspapers about what he, they say, was a good guy. And it is right. But here - through stupidity, through monstrous stupidity, more than a hundred people die. And what do they write about them? Have you seen this "troll factory"? “Ah, mercenaries, why feel sorry for them” - this is some kind of fantastic level of hypocrisy, when ordinary guys from the outback are sent to die God knows where for money, and then they are buried in unmarked graves.

And if they were contract soldiers in the army, would it be better?

Certainly. First, it's a completely different attitude. Secondly, the army provides a number of bonuses. This includes citizenship, pension, and much more. And most importantly - the status of a legitimate participant in hostilities, as well as some kind of immunity from local laws. A soldier of the Russian army will not be handed over to a Syrian court, a soldier of the French foreign legion will not be handed over to a court in Mali.

And the PMC employee is a civilian. If Wagner employees had full military status, I personally would have nothing against it. For example, a man dies, and the mother can say to his child: “Son, your dad was a soldier, and he died as a hero, fought against terrorists.” Now what? Son, your dad didn’t know who did what, they didn’t tell us, he died when the dumb-headed oligarch wanted to wring out the oil field.

There was a precedent in history when the UAE hired about two thousand Colombians for the war in Yemen. And they even hid - like the Russian authorities - but they took them into the army, paid a very decent salary. And these were official soldiers in the service. So no, "PMC Wagner" is what in Russian is called "an illegal armed group", which is not clear to whom it obeys and is capable of provoking a huge international conflict due to the stupidity of its commanders. As a person who has been working in this field almost all his life, I support its development in every possible way, but such formations are harmful not only for the industry, but also for the image of Russia.

Why do you say that Wagner has a lower level contingent than the army?

Look, every person in our field personally knows someone who serves there, or someone who refused their offer. But nobody does not know a volunteer who would be denied admission by Wagner PMC. They take everyone: people with a criminal record, with alcohol addiction - everyone in a row.

It is enough to talk with their employees to understand: they are not only up to the level of the Special Operations Forces, they are not always up to ordinary construction battalions. Neither by the level of education, nor by the level of military training, nor by motivation. Again: I have great respect for those who work there. But let's be honest: professionals don't go there. Such a “wonderful” job, such an “amazing” opportunity to die even without a guarantee that your corpse will at least be returned home, they do not need. None of the Russians I know - those who worked in Iraq at the beginning of the 2000s, who are now working with Gazprom in Kurdistan - did not go there, because everyone understands that this, as they say, is a bad idea.

Does it happen that a private company conducts full-fledged military operations, and even with such losses? According to various sources, there could be up to two hundred dead among the mercenaries of the Wagner group.

Absolutely not. It is impossible to even imagine that now some Western PMC, an official company, is fighting. This is absolute absurdity. There was a precedent with Executive Outcomes who were involved in several civil wars in Africa, but that was in the early 90s. Since then the world has changed.

South Africans fought in Nigeria a few years ago. But some large international companies were not involved in this. This is a specific situation when specific people are recruited for a specific job, whose activities are initially completely outside the legal field. Therefore, Wagner is, of course, not a PMC. You can call it whatever you like, but in the Russian criminal code it is called an "illegal armed formation." I have nothing against the people who work there - I understand their motivation, I respect them as professionals, but you need to understand that this situation is not normal. Nothing like this can happen in any Western PMC.

Doesn't Wagner PMC work in the Russian legal field?

Of course no. On what basis are people given weapons, on what basis do they conduct military operations? I'm not a Syrian lawyer, I don't know what the laws are. But, in my opinion, the “Wagnerites” do not work either within the framework of Russian law or within the framework of the Syrian one. This is, as you like to say, "an education that has no analogues in the world."

But why do people go there? A job with a very high risk, with the possibility of getting a corny bullet in the forehead or a term for mercenarism?

I have not lived in Russia for a long time, but it is obvious that there is only one answer - despair. The economic situation in your country, especially in the regions, is difficult. Many people have served in the army and believe that they can't do anything else. They don't really know how to serve. But at least they identify themselves as great warriors. Plus, you need to understand that a certain militaristic pumping and propaganda has been going on in society for many, many years.

So desperation, lack of money and qualifications, extremely high housing prices, lack of affordable loans - these are all factors. Even with such losses, I'm afraid there will be a lot of people who want to get a job at Wagner. Especially from small towns. Look at the well-known lists of casualties: there is almost no one from Moscow or St. Petersburg. These are all small towns where people have lost hope long ago. And the amount of 200 thousand rubles that a dishwasher in Britain receives makes people forget about everything and go nowhere, spitting on the instinct of self-preservation.

Well, with the "Wagnerites" is understandable. And what about normal PMCs? In the Russian media, mercenaries are portrayed as heroes rushing into battle on the most dangerous sectors of the front. How true is this image? What do private military companies actually do?

Completely not true. For a long time there have been no bearded guys with tattoos, dissecting in jeeps through the desert and firing at anything from a machine gun. 80-90 percent of business is absolutely standard stuff. It is necessary to hang cameras, look at monitors, stretch barbed wire, provide drivers, technical intelligence equipment, and engage in analytics. The "bearded thugs" used to represent PMC employees are a minority, and a vanishing minority in this business. In fact, the work of PMCs is the work of watchmen, absolutely devoid of romanticism.

In general, there is a stereotype that the main work of a private military company is armed guards. But this should not be so: this situation has developed only because at one time Iraq and Afghanistan simply did not have a capable government and crowds of adventurers with weapons gathered there.

We have a lot of talk about the need for a law on PMCs, which would normalize their activities ... These conversations make me laugh. In America, which everyone nods at, there is no separate law on private military companies, and they do a pretty good job. I don’t follow what is happening in Russia at all, but I often see what Russian journalists write about PMCs, and I laugh at it. I was taken aback by the recent situation in Syria.

Firstly, people died there, and secondly, everyone immediately began to tell: they say, everything is fine, these are mercenaries and why feel sorry for them. So. All this is said by clowns who have no idea what a PMC is and how it all works. Because nothing like what happened to Wagner PMC employees in Syria could physically happen either in an American, or in a British, or even in an Afghan company.

Let's just open our eyes and look at what a PMC is. I will decipher the abbreviation for those who do not know. PMC is first and foremost company is a private military company. An indispensable condition for its existence is the legality of activity. Now the most important and most needed person for PMCs is not a thug with a cleaver at the ready, but an approval manager - a specialist who monitors that all company activities comply with local laws.

And a PMC, by definition, cannot work outside the legal field, outside the law, because then it is no longer a company. This is a criminal organization, a gang - anything but a PMC. And when we now work in unstable regions and read the stories of various Russian propagandists, it first becomes funny, and then scary.

And hard mode is usually set?

In general, everything is maximally exhaustively described by the contract, which is signed in each individual case. But the main thing: any employee is completely subject to the laws of the country where he works. In fact, this is a four-component system: first, local laws, then the laws of the customer country, then the laws of the country in which the PMC is registered, then the contract. Each layer - additional restrictions.

And now imagine how rigidly this norms any activity, how great is the role of lawyers who must understand all conflicts, what bureaucratic colossus needs to be done in order to start fulfilling contractual obligations.

After all, even a contract is not an agreement on a page where it is written that company "A" protects the employees of plant "B" and there are two signatures. This is a huge, eight-hundred-page Talmud, which puts the performer in an extremely rigid framework. It even talks about standards of behavior, about sexual harassment!

But in Russia everything is still the same. Just one light from said: "During the second assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Blackwater played a key role, in fact, acting first as a barrage detachment, and then as the main force of the breakthrough." Usually I laugh when I read this, but then I wanted to find this person, take him by the scruff of the neck and ask: “Clown, what are you talking about ?!”

However, for some reason, this “four-component system” could not save Iraqi civilians from the tragedy when employees of the American company Blackwater shot civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007.

Right. I will not touch on what was there - this is a topic for a separate conversation. But contrary to the tales in the press, the participants in these events were tried, and in 2014 four were imprisoned. One for life, three others were given 30 years each. This is not an isolated case: the British are sitting in India, who simply accidentally swam into Indian territorial waters.

Under these conditions, it is ridiculous to say that PMC employees are "above the law." On the contrary, they are not only forced to comply with all laws, they regularly come up with new restrictions. Now even the language is being revised. For example, the term "rules for opening fire" is abandoned because it sounds too belligerent, it is replaced by the neutral "rules on the use of force."

As I said, the space for activity is constantly shrinking. In 2004, there was complete freedom in Iraq, but now Baghdad is doing everything so that only local mercenaries remain in the country. Now you can freely operate in absolutely non-existent countries such as Syria.

The conversations of our deputies and other experts that Russian PMCs will work somewhere will be frankly confused, but there is a complete misunderstanding of the situation and its context. In a few years, foreigners will remain only on large projects: the protection of embassies, key infrastructure, and then everything, without exception, will go to the locals.

Is hiring local a whim or a necessity?

I will give a simple example. Both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, PMCs always have local drivers. Why? It's simple: if a citizen of another country got into an accident or, God forbid, crushed someone, then they will simply sue him, or even put him in prison for decades. Therefore, they take a local, so that if something happens, they can disown him.

I remember only two exceptions. The period from 2003 to 2006 in Iraq, and from 2001 to 2004 in Afghanistan. Then it was possible to be above local laws, simply because they did not exist in fact. You flew in, there were no visas and passport control, you received a machine gun right on the runway and went to the villa with full “immunity”. But then in Iraq, for example, there was no state. There was the American ambassador Paul Bremer, the head of the occupying government and, in fact, the supreme ruler of Iraq. In that particular historical period, PMC employees could indeed enjoy certain immunity.

Now the situation is fundamentally different. Without permits, licenses do not take a step. They banned the use of the PKM (Kalashnikov machine gun), then they took away the RPK (Kalashnikov light machine gun), we even seized two SVD rifles (Dragunov sniper rifle). They left the usual Kalashnikovs and pistols. Only local contractors help out - they have access to government offices, they can avoid prosecution for minor violations, they know the language, local realities. And hiring them is cheaper - banal business logic. They can be paid pennies.

The only exception is US government contracts, which only recruit US citizens, because only they can issue the necessary form of security clearance. Here they have all the employees - Americans, even those who stand at the gate. Only due to this there is some kind of work, because it is simply impossible to hire a foreigner there. If there is no security clearance requirement, then locals will be hired. True, their qualifications, as a rule, are almost at zero.

We see the results, remember the recent attack on a hotel in Kabul (then, as a result of an attack on a hotel populated mainly by Western officials, 43 people died - note "Lenta.ru"). It is obvious that this hotel is the number one target for all the villains, but even it was guarded by local clowns, who fled at the first sound of gunfire.

But a local employee needs to understand: you live there, you have a family. Today you defend some foreigner for money, and tomorrow your family will be slaughtered by the Taliban for this. So even if you are a professional, there is not much to expect from you. The only exception is the Kurds. Here they are really beautiful. Firstly, the society there has a positive attitude towards foreigners. Foreigners bring money, not war. No one will hurt your family if you guard foreigners. Secondly, many of them are really literate guys, they know the materiel, they speak English well. It is a pleasure to work with them.

What is the current ratio of "militants" and organizers, managers, analysts in companies?

It all depends on the specific contract. But in reality, in many countries where there is a severe need for security, it is simply impossible to work with weapons. Nigeria is a monstrous, scary place, but whoever you are, you cannot work with weapons there. Mexico, where the cartels kidnap 50 people every day, you can't. The only way out is if an armed group of Mexicans will work with you, and at a critical moment you will be able to grab a rifle from their hands and begin to administer justice.

But in fact, always under any contract, the number of armed foreigners is less than half, and maybe none at all. Now it’s much easier to hire a local to run around with a machine gun. And the authorities will be grateful. As a result, we have a huge number of people who want to work and a very, very small and ever-decreasing number of vacancies.

How big is the market for private military companies?

The total industry in the world is 171 billion dollars. But it is already divided among very large corporations. All of the significant companies in this area over the past four years have been bought by multinational security players who don't know how to operate in high-risk situations.

Now in the West there are practically no small and medium-sized players in this activity. The market consists of international corporations and local regional contractors. The reality is that the market for armed guards, the one that you journalists love to talk about, is by no means growing.

On the contrary, it is decreasing every year. And the reason is very simple: no normal state will allow the presence of foreigners with weapons on their soil. How often do you see armed citizens of other states in Russia? Foreign guards with machine guns, pistols that protect someone? No! Any state, even such failed countries as Iraq or Afghanistan, is now bringing foreign PMCs into such a narrow framework that work becomes almost impossible.

Who do PMCs usually work for? To the state?

It's a delusion. Private companies mainly fulfill orders of private business. It is impossible even to imagine that a Western or even an Afghan or Iraqi large company would work only with the state, only for the state, and even in this form, openly participating in hostilities. Although state contracts are always very profitable - it is either the protection of representatives of a particular state, or the protection of embassies, which is very monetary.

What do states usually entrust to private military companies?

Intelligence analysis, risk analysis, protection of embassies and diplomatic representatives, security of various facilities, if we are talking about American contracts. Once there was a case when he instructed the PMC to guard the corps of military engineers of the American army - there were not enough forces in that region. Stories that some political assassinations are entrusted to contract soldiers are, of course, fairy tales.

Cannon fodder, assault squads - this is not about PMCs. It was all in the 60s-90s and ended with Sandline and their coup attempt in Papua New Guinea. This was probably one of the last times someone tried to hire a PMC for some semblance of hostilities.

Photo: Jean-Christophe Kahn / Reuters

But he was lucky to some extent: Denard did not die in prison just because he had Alzheimer's disease. By the 90s, all state games with mercenaries were over. The old man was dragged through the courts until he died, and no old merit helped. So in Russia, as often happens, they decided to pick up a forgotten trend.

But can't we say that Syria is the same failed state, like Iraq during the period of occupation by the Americans?

Essentially no. There's a funny twist here. If you look from the position of Russia, then this is a fully established country with a government and laws. A wonderful state, where happy people idolize the president, are devoted to him with all their hearts, are very glad that the war with the Islamic State (banned in the Russian Federation - note "Lenta.ru") is over.

That is, there is no such thing that we came, threw Assad off the throne, put our supreme ruler. No, we supposedly respect Syrian laws and their authority. But if power and law are when "Assad allowed" another state to form illegal armed formations on its territory and use them in a war, then this is just an example of a failed state.

It is unlikely that Syrian law allows the creation of illegal military formations on its territory and the conduct of independent military operations by them. However, I am not a lawyer and I am not going to meddle in Syria.

For many "Wagnerites" the war is just a way to make money. There is information that employees receive three thousand dollars for a month of active hostilities and half of this amount during their stay at the base. How close are these numbers to reality, and how do they compare with typical salaries in the industry?

Let's put it this way: they are close to reality. People from there talk about such amounts. But in general, you need to understand that even in hot spots, it’s not every day that evil terrorists with knives break into your base. The lower the risk level, the bigger idiots you can hire for this job. Therefore, often, when it is possible to hire a person, let's say, with low salary expectations, they will hire him.

It started back in the 2000s, when Chileans were hired for a penny, then it came to Ugandans. I worked with them in one African country - these comrades cannot even shoot normally from a machine gun. If there is an opportunity, and the risks are small, they always hire the cheapest ones.

Therefore, in the field of maritime protection, where everything started with salaries of six hundred dollars or six hundred pounds a day, salaries have fallen to ridiculous figures. Recently I saw an advertisement where Ukrainians were offered a job on the terms: 30 days at sea for $800. Discussed this in Iraq with a colleague from India and he, to tell the truth, almost died of laughter. Because it's funny money. But the Ukrainians go for it. Therefore, it is difficult to talk about some kind of average market wage. It very often falls because they hire locals or representatives of poor countries for pennies, including Romanians, Gurkhas, Indians, Ukrainians, Ugandans.

There are more prestigious contracts, where very high requirements are put forward for personnel. In this case, certain standards of payment are implied: for serious quality work, you can get about 10 thousand dollars a month. Few rise above this bar.

Is it really necessary to compete at a high level?

Recently there was a tender for the protection of the Australian embassy in one fairly "good country". So: just to show up, you need huge investments at the very beginning. Yes, they pay very decently for such a contract, but the problem of Russian companies is that there is no such business in this area that would be ready to go all the way and invest real money. There was an excellent example of the LUKOM-A company, which recruited people and was going to go to work in Iraq. They were simply not given a license to operate.

No one in Iraq or Afghanistan needs new players. It is run by local companies and the largest international corporations that can afford it. So the development of the Russian segment of PMCs will depend only on the development of domestic business. Once there is a critical number of projects to secure, the security business will emerge. You need to understand that there is already a need for it, but it is not fully realized.

Look at the most egregious case - the murder of the Russian ambassador in Ankara. Where were his guards? She just wasn't there. She was in Moscow. The division that deals with the security of the diplomatic corps is simply not able to provide protection to everyone who needs it. All countries employ private security specialists for these tasks.

But our state, instead of supporting the development of a normal healthy industry, is engaged in the creation of pocket illegal formations like Wagner. At the same time, Russian diplomatic representatives in countries with a huge level of danger are simply not protected by anyone. If this crazy practice continues, it will continue to cost the lives of Russian diplomats.

Three Russian journalists - Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguev and Orkhan Dzhemal - were killed in the Central African Republic (CAR) on Monday, July 30. The Russians went there to investigate the activities of the "private military company Wagner". Journalists and activists have collected a lot of information about her bit by bit over the past few years. DW presents all the most important things we have learned so far.

What is PMC Wagner

The Wagner Private Military Company or the Wagner Group is an unofficial military organization that is not part of the regular armed forces of Russia and does not have legal status on its territory. The military units of PMC Wagner numbered at different times and according to various sources, from 1350 to 2000 people. According to sources in the German newspaper Bild in the Bundeswehr, the total number of mercenaries reaches 2,500 people.

Ruslan Leviev, founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an activist group that monitors the actions of the Russian military in Syria, clarifies that salaries depend on skills, goals and the location of the operation. During training in Russia, according to CIT, the salary ranges from 50 to 80 thousand, during foreign operations - 100-120 thousand, in the event of hostilities - 150-200 thousand, in the case of special campaigns or major battles - up to 300 thousand .

Where do mercenaries train?in Russia

The "Wagner Group", according to numerous testimonies, is training at a military base near the Molkino farm in the Krasnodar Territory, directly adjacent to the 10th separate brigade of the GRU special forces of the RF Ministry of Defense (military unit 51532). There is no information about other training points.

Losses among mercenaries

The calculation of losses among the "soldiers of fortune" is complicated for a number of reasons: this is the illegal status of PMCs and its fighters, and the company's formal non-accountability to government agencies, and a non-disclosure agreement. As a result, the relatives of the victims often find out about the incident only a few weeks later. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation refuses to record losses among mercenaries.

In October 2017, the SBU provided data on 67 dead, who had experience of military operations both in the Donbass and in Syria. As of December 2017, the Fontanka journalists estimated the total number of established casualties since the beginning of the participation of mercenaries in hostilities in Syria at 73, the CIT team at 101 people.

See also:

• From spring to war

  In early 2011, the "Arab Spring" reached Syria, but the first peaceful demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the police. Then, starting on March 15, mass protests began to flare up across the country demanding the resignation of Bashar al-Assad. It was hardly imaginable that those events would set off a conflict that would drag on for eight long years and claim the lives of nearly half a million Syrians.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Parties to the conflict

After a wave of mass protests swept through the country, Assad began to use the army to suppress them. In turn, opponents of the regime were forced to take up arms. The conflict also included groups of national minorities (for example, the Kurds) and Islamist terrorist groups, among which the so-called "Islamic State" stands apart.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

"Caliphate" of terrorists

In April 2013, fighters from the terrorist organization ISIS, formed from a division of al-Qaeda, entered the civil war in Syria. In June 2014, the group announced the renaming of the "Islamic state" and proclaimed "caliphate". According to some reports, in 2015, about 70 percent of the territory of Syria was under the control of ISIS, and the number of militants was 60,000 people.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Cultural heritage as a target for terrorists

The destruction of the ancient oasis city of Palmyra has become a symbol of the barbaric treatment of cultural heritage by ISIS terrorists. In total, more than 300 archaeological sites have been destroyed since the start of the civil war in Syria. In February 2015, the UN Security Council equated the destruction of objects of historical, cultural and religious value by IS militants to acts of terrorism.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Migration Crisis

According to the UN, over the past seven years, 5.3 million Syrians have fled the country. Most of them took refuge in neighboring Turkey (more than 3 million people), Lebanon (over 1 million) and Jordan (almost 700 thousand). But the possibilities of these countries to receive refugees were practically exhausted. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have gone to seek refuge in Europe, sparking a refugee crisis in the EU.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

International coalition against ISIS

In September 2014, US President Barack Obama announced the creation of an international coalition against IS, which included more than 60 states. Members of the coalition launched airstrikes on militant positions, trained local ground forces, and provided humanitarian assistance to the population. In December 2018, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of American soldiers from Syria, justifying this with a victory over ISIS.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Islamic Anti-Terrorist Coalition

In December 2015, Saudi Arabia presented its anti-terrorist coalition, consisting of Islamic countries. It includes 34 states, some of which, like the Saudis themselves, are also members of the international coalition led by the United States.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Russian involvement

Since the fall of 2015, the Russian Aerospace Forces have also been carrying out strikes in Syria, according to Moscow, only against ISIS positions. According to NATO, 80% of Russian airstrikes were aimed at Assad's opponents from the moderate opposition. In November 2017, Putin announced the imminent end of his military mission in Syria. The grouping will be reduced, but 2 military bases and some other structures will remain at the disposal of the Russian Federation.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Peace negotiations

On March 14, 2016, on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the start of the civil war in Syria, negotiations on a peaceful settlement of the conflict under the auspices of the UN started in Geneva. The first such attempt in early February ended in failure against the backdrop of the offensive of Assad's army on the city of Aleppo. The second chance appeared after the conclusion of a truce between the parties on February 27 with the assistance of the United States and the Russian Federation.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Use of chemical weapons

According to a joint UN/OPCW report, the Assad regime is responsible for the use of the poison sarin in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017, and the Islamic State used sulfur mustard during an attack in Oum Hosh in September 2016.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Arrangement for security zones

Since January 2017, in the capital of Kazakhstan, at the initiative of Russia, Turkey and Iran, inter-Syrian negotiations have been held parallel to the Geneva talks on a settlement in Syria. For the first time, representatives of both the Bashar al-Assad regime and opposition forces met at the same table. In May, a memorandum on the creation of four de-escalation zones in northern, central and southern Syria was signed in Astana.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

A year of radical change in Syria

The year 2017 brought radical changes to the situation in Syria. Back in December 2016, Assad’s troops, with the support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, liberated Aleppo, and in the spring of 2017, Homs. And in June, US-Russian agreements were reached to establish the Euphrates River as a dividing line between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Assad's troops.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Defeat of IS, but not yet the final victory

In 2018, Assad's troops occupied the strategically important city of Deir ez-Zor and several others. And the opposition "Forces of Democratic Syria" and the Kurdish YPG with the support of the United States - Rakku. On March 3, 2019, a decisive battle took place for the last settlement of Bahgus, which is in the hands of ISIS. After the liberation of the village, only a remote region west of the Euphrates will remain under ISIS control.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

Troika in Sochi

In 2017, at a meeting in Sochi, the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey, Vladimir Putin, Hassan Rouhani and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came up with a number of initiatives, calling on Damascus and the opposition to participate in the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, which should pave the way for constitutional reform. In 2019, the leaders of the three states said that control of Syria should return to the government in Damascus.



Syria: 8 years of war and unclear prospects for conflict resolution

New use of chemical weapons in Douma

According to humanitarian organizations, on April 7, 2018, chemical weapons were used again in the city of Duma, the last center of resistance of Islamists and rebels in the region. According to WHO, more than 70 people died during the attack, and 500 residents had symptoms of poisoning. Syrian authorities denied this information. But on March 1, 2019, OPCW experts concluded that chlorine was most likely used in Douma.

What is Wagner PMC, how do they get there? How does Wagner fight?

When all the foam around the PMC "Wagner" subsided, I post my conversation with one of the "Wagnerites".Judge for yourself...

V.Sh. How long have you been?
PMC. Six months.
V.Sh. Full contract?
PMC. Fully.
V.Sh. You traveled through Krasnodar, as I understand it?
PMC.Yes. From musicians (?)
V.Sh. What is the geography from Krasnodar, where are you going?
PMC.Do you know the squad numbers?
V.Sh. No.
PMC.Then I will not say, in principle, not the point.
V.Sh. Detachments - were they companies, a battalion?
PMC.Relaxed battalion or reinforced company. 300 personnel.
V.Sh. With armored vehicles?
PMC.ABOUT! There were armored vehicles. One BRDM per company, but mostly trucks ...

V.Sh. Where did you go next?
PMC. I was told that, given my reputation, the most dashing division of this organization would suit me. A very talented squad leader, deputy commander. To put it very briefly, the rest of the units very quickly suffered losses and lost their offensive potential. And our detachment, in fact, dragged all the tasks on this business trip.

V.Sh. How many of you were there?
PMC. I do not know for sure. There were several squads. There are a few more numbered. At one time they wanted to recruit even more units, but then they abandoned this idea. They tried to create another organization - to recruit people with non-Russian passports. But it’s junk, it goes through a stump-deck, I don’t know if it will work out or not. In short, I did not delve too deeply into issues that did not concern my competence.
Accordingly, the forces of our detachment broke through the strip ...

V.Sh. Commanded by a veteran?
PMC. You mean a combat veteran? Yes, sure. He has been in this organization almost from the very beginning. And he was in Lugansk, and one of the detachments under his command took Palmyra. That is a person with a lot of experience.

V.Sh. Former officer?
PMC. Well, you know, the fact that he served in the Russian army is for sure. Whether he rose to the rank of officer, I don't know. We definitely had a deputy commander, with experience from Grozny. Such is the fusion of experience and youth.

V.Sh. Were you there by name or pseudonym?
PMC. By callsign. All by call. Sometimes by name - patronymic is possible. But in most cases, it is more convenient for us to use call signs.

First, the forces of our detachment broke through the band of enemy "supporters". This is in the direction of Akerbat. Then, in two incomplete days, our detachment took Akerbat. Why do I say - our detachment, because the rest, well ... stood nearby and did not take part in this fun. Then we punched approaches to the Euphrates, then crossed the Euphrates. Again, our detachment was on the other side, all the rest remained on this one ...

V.Sh. And what did they force?
PMC. On rubber boats. My car and several cars were transported by Syrian transporters, then the transporters broke down, and no one built the pontoon bridge. That is, it was assumed that we would seize the bridgehead, the Syrians would build a pontoon bridge, and the mighty Syrian and Russian armies would flood over it and sweep the enemy away.

The reality turned out to be a little different - the transporters broke down, the pontoons were not built, and as a result, we remained on the other side as a detachment. The BC was only what they brought with them, the wounded were taken away in rubber boats. The question was very simple: either we, without looking back at anyone, will kill all the enemy that we have within sight, and awesomely expand the bridgehead, or we will be pressed ashore and finished off. Therefore, the personnel of our detachment chose the first option, there was a mahach there - in general. I don’t know, it’s not good to be proud, you have to be modest ... in short, while expanding the bridgehead for three days, I did a lot of things there.

V.Sh. Was it there that Asapov died?
PMC. No, not with us. There were no “feds” for these three days. And then famously brought the pontoons when the Russian pontoons arrived, they did it very quickly and very well. Where the fellows are, there are the fellows, I won’t criticize in vain.

V.Sh. What happened next?
PMC. And after that, in fact, the main hunt (?) ended. The enemy butted a little more, we, as much as we were instructed, cleared out, came into contact with the sub-Pindos Kurds. Well, then they took us out of there. We stood for a month, looked at the mountains, meditated, and then finally brought them out.

V.Sh. Where were they taken?
PMC. I won't tell you the exact place, there were oil fields...Preparation for departure home. And at the very end of December they arrived in Russia, and now, accordingly, at home. According to the results of participation, I wrote diaries every day, there were 400 pages of text. But there was such a situation - it destroyed everything. It dawned on the authorities that I was writing something. And I was advised to tie it up. Maybe it's for the best. Now you can’t publish it, but in 10 years events will happen, and no one will be interested.

V.Sh. Tell us your impressions about the ISIS, about the enemy in general.
PMC. Most of those we encountered were Russian-speaking mercenaries - very different: Tajiks, Uzbeks, Caucasians. As I understand it, they were specially placed against our detachment, because in battle they tried to pretend to be their own - and by radio, they often knew the passwords, understood what we were talking about, i.e. intercepted radio communications. In addition, they are clearly motivated. A person who has landed in another country is clearly more motivated than a local who has been forcibly shaved. Judging by their appearance, among the prisoners who were taken, a fairly significant number are experienced drug addicts. That is, he is 30 years old, and he looks at all 50. And our dock also said the same thing, that a lot of punctures and breaking down are lying around in a couple of days.

V.Sh. Are you talking about Russian speakers?
PMC. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs. There were also Russians who stood against us, but it was not possible to take anyone alive. We assume that the Russians - by the combination of signs. The tushnyak was with the inscription "not for sale", the vests remained after them, cartridges 5.45. That is, there are a lot of signs that point to the Slavs.

V.Sh. And could not crests be?
PMC. Khokhols? They would work with 7.62 or NATO weapons.

V.Sh. Why? They have 5.45 - as much as you want.
PMC. Well, they really wanted to find crests, but they didn’t get caught by our detachment, and others too.

V.Sh. So there was no information?
PMC. There was information, but at the level of rumors, but in order to really catch it, it was not.

V.Sh. And where, you say, did you find this bed with all the good stuff - with vests and other things?
PMC. It was in Deir ez-Zor.

V.Sh. In or below it?
PMC. Around. In the same place, the city slowly flows ... here along the banks of the Euphrates. Where they butted heads with them, they found them there.

V.Sh. Did you pay your entire salary?
PMC. We do. I won't speak for the rest. But our detachment, which fought the most, was paid everything and even some bonuses for awards.

V.Sh. How much did you lose in six months of the offensive?
PMC. 30-200, a hundred - 300.

V.Sh. Is it just your squad?
PMC. Yes. But we also fought the hardest. In fact, for everyone!

V.Sh. It turns out that a third of the detachment was out of order?
PMC. Well, in fact, yes. Considering that the fire support platoon, i.e. heavy weapons and rear services did not lose, consider no one at all, then attack aircraft - more than half.

V.Sh. On what? From what?
PMC. Mainly small arms. The enemy had very little artillery, not at all comparable with the Ukrainians. Explosions on mines were isolated. That is, as soon as we broke through the strip of "fortifications", we began to advance, they did not have time to mine on a large scale. Accordingly, mainly - losses from small arms.

V.Sh. Snipers, or just skirmishes?
PMC. Snipers... perhaps something that can be called snipers, only once in Deir ez-Zor, when our platoon hit very hard, literally in a day, a bunch of two hundredths - in the head, in the chest. And literally the next day they transferred a group of our heavy snipers, brigade subordination. I worked with them. They quickly killed five people, caught a group of "spirits" with optics, tracked them down at night and "merged". And after that, such a dense accurate fire stopped, and that's it. That is, this is the only case of using snipers.

V.Sh. How many people died then?
PMC. We have? Three "two hundredths" in a day, and several heavy "three hundredths".

V.Sh. Head, chest?
PMC. And not only the head, the chest. There have been fabulous cases. One wounded. I remember helping, I look, there is no ass. I think, how is it so splintered? It turns out that he had a "VOG" in the tape, and a bullet hit there, and he exploded. In short, there were such, very severe injuries, quite rare, which you don’t often see.

V.Sh. Compared to Donbass, how do you feel?
PMC. A completely different war. First, here we have a professional staff. Everyone has at least one war, some have three, some have four. Second, highly motivated people. There were different ones in the Donbass, and when a real hard fight began, many dumped. And here, in general, very specific guys, it's nice to work. Exceptional leadership. It all depends on the commander. In this regard, I am very pleased. Means of communication - issued. radio stations. True, it was not enough, the weapons are the same as in the Donbass, maybe even worse in some ways. At least they were given weapons, but…

V.Sh. "Bumblebees" did not give?
PMC. There was very little. There were no thermal bars, there were no "carrots" for RPGs. That is, it was bad for infantry means. The enemy was quite worthy competition, because he had the same “shooter”, instead of our “Urals” they had pickup trucks, and I think, in those conditions, this is definitely better. Their drones worked perfectly, ours did not work at all, their communications worked well. That is, as if they were not playing with one goal.

V.Sh. Did you have any intelligence? That is, they gave you something - some kind of data, interceptions?
PMC. Everything about intelligence is very sad. The situation looks like this - if our drone is working, it is like an airplane, it flies at high speed, it shoots. The slightest roll of some kind - he removes the wrong square that he needs. We ordered reconnaissance, while the order came “upstairs”, while we planned it, while it was sent, while we received the data, while it was lowered to us - no one needs it anymore. In this regard, small enemy drones are much more effective. The commander needs it - he sent it, looked at the situation ...

V.Sh. Are we big and healthy?
PMC. Yes. Expensive and completely useless crap.

V.Sh. That is irrelevant from the point of view ...
PMC. I no longer scandalize out loud, because the "organizational structures" found me a threat that I'm afraid of. They said that if I make a row, they won't let me fight next time. Really...

V.Sh. Are you going back there?
PMC. I am ready to go anywhere where there is real work. If only they would. And to come, for example, to the Donbass and stupidly sit there under shelling is not my thing ..

V.Sh. Returning to the agenda. What are your plans?
PMC. I am in thought. To put it very briefly, I liked everything very much, and I would like to continue, especially since they also pay.

V.Sh. How many do you have in front?
PMC. I have no idea. We were sent on vacation, they literally said the following: "When you need it, they will call you." Moreover, they may call immediately, they may call after 9 months, they may not call at all.

V.Sh. Did the office itself stay there?
PMC. Of course she stayed. There are detachments, someone works there. Mine stayed. It was not disbanded.

V.Sh. It turns out how much continuous contact did you have?
PMC. We stood next to the enemy actually from the very beginning, i.e. how they got up in June, they tried to infiltrate our positions at night, we fought them off with fire, they were blown up by mines. In general, we constantly connected with the enemy somewhere from June to the end of November. Active hostilities are about three months, to be honest. August, September, October.

V.Sh. This is just an attack on Palmyra ...
PMC. It was no longer necessary to take Palmyra, it was already ours, the attack on Akerbat. And then through Mother Palmyra, all body movements with the Euphrates and Deir ez-Zor.

V.Sh. And when did they go to the Euphrates?
PMC. This was in early September. Exactly what - I will not say. Everything was in burnt diaries.

V.Sh. What was their activity? Did they try to advance, counterattack?
PMC. Tried. But, to be honest, the game was equal, two g played ... In the Donbass, at least when the enemy fought, they are fucked up, such armored vehicles, artillery, if ISIS had as much artillery as the Ukrainians had, I wouldn’t I know what would happen to us. But there was no artillery. Tanks too. Well, from time to time someone runs and shoots there, ours will find him and kill him. Infantry? Well, it was less than in the Donbass. True, better infantry, of course. By moral will, etc.

V.Sh. That is morally motivated?
PMC. Of course, in this respect - yes. In short, I expected much worse, because when you watch television, you think: “Damn, there are completely shahids!”. Yes, there were martyrs both in cars and on foot. There were losses from them. But if 300 people, even if they are very motivated, can significantly affect the fate of the war, then this is a very small war.

V.Sh. Aviation supported you?
PMC. Directly us - when Akerbat was taken, two helicopters inflicted a BShU around the city. This is where it all ended. In general, our command refused to support aviation and, by and large, also evaded artillery support. Why? There was a very high probability that we would be hit. Artillery is a big problem. The fact is, for example, that when they advanced in Deir ez-Zor, and our detachment was the only one that retained its combat capability, they gave it immeasurable artillery. Well, it’s unmeasured for two hundred people: two Grad batteries, several howitzer batteries, something else ...

V.Sh. Syrian or ours?
PMC. Ours. And ours, and contract, and in general everything that was in that place is ours. But there was not a single spotter who could manage all this. Therefore, the command refused to support artillery. Our spotters, who were our infantrymen, were injured at that time and were evacuated, and the assigned spotters refused to go with the attack aircraft. And if the spotter is sitting in the rear, it is not clear how he will correct.

V.Sh. Relatively speaking, we call you "Wagnerites", the army - "soviets", which spotters - "Wagnerites" refused to go or "soviets" ...
PMC. Yes, "Wagnerites", but neighbors.

V.Sh. In general, what was the main punishment - sending?
PMC. Yes, just sending to the rear units, if you didn’t make a big mistake, or to the “union”, if it’s bad.

V.Sh. But then no one pays anything?
PMC. I don't know what their fate is. They pay something there, a bare salary for some time, without fighting, without bonuses. But again, I didn’t delve into it, the less you know, you sleep better.

V.Sh. Did you get six months?
PMC. Yes, exactly six months.

V.Sh. How do you feel about the Syrians themselves?
PMC. I had almost no contact with them. Well, we went to the city, bought medicines, when the command let go, for the entire unit. With the military - they are separate, we are separate. But there is such a moment. I treated the Syrians in Syria normally.
Our attitude towards the Syrians was different. I proceeded from the fact that once again there was no point in wringing my nerves in the war, therefore I tried to have a positive attitude towards the “peacekeeper”, to be neutral towards the enemy. Unlike Bandera, I have no particular hatred. Well, you're on a mission...

V.Sh. Were there prisoners?
PMC. Yes, sure.

V.Sh. Russian speakers?
PMC. Yes. There were many Russian-speaking prisoners.
V.Sh. Namely the republics of Central Asia?

PMC. Well, yes. They speak excellent Russian. We were here, worked as builders all over Russia, and then went there to earn money.

V.Sh. For money?
PMC. Yes.

V.Sh. And motivation is only money, or ...
PMC. Well, one, I remember, says: "We are fighting for our faith." Me: “I wonder what your faith is?” He: Faith is jihad. Me: "Interesting. Islam - I know such a faith, I know Buddhism, Christianity, but jihad - I don’t know. What are your provisions, canons? As a result, everything is explained simply - they promised a house, two wives and a lot of money. That's who I often talked to, the motivation came down to this. But I think they're screwing around. A staunch Islamist can be let into consumption. Why the hell does he need to be alive? Therefore, in captivity, everyone whines at once - either “I was forced”, or “deceived”. Who will say that he is ideological, hates Russians and wants to kill them?

V.Sh. And what's next for them?
PMC. They were taken for interrogation somewhere higher, to the command. And what happened after the conversation with them - I don’t even know. There were even rumors that they were deported back to their homeland, to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, to be tried there. Of course, there were certainly cases when the prisoners were not so lucky. But I will say briefly - you know less, you sleep better. Where they do not ask me, I do not climb. I work strictly within my range.

V.Sh. Was there a connection with the house?
PMC. No! Only at the base, from where they went to combat and where they returned. And when the provinces went - no. First, there is almost no connection. If there are hostilities, then all the towers, repeaters, etc. are destroyed by fire first. And secondly, for a found cell phone, they were immediately deprived of their salary. Because any inclusion was immediately cut off by both ours and "spirits". And talking in Russian is just an autopsy of our arrival in the area and location. Therefore, the stories, like, my friend from the war zone called me, this is a lie! I heard my family a week before my flight to Russia, when I was already at the base. And so five months was out of touch.

V.Sh. What if something happened at home? Or if a person was injured, if "two hundredth"?

PMC. Well, the command was in touch. Through acquaintances, through those who returned, it was possible to reach the leadership. And from there they could pass along the chain to the detachment that such and such a problem, they could even send them home. There was such a case. Even more so with the wounded and the 200th - they were immediately evacuated to Russia. There is simply nowhere to store "two hundredths". Do not bury? If that happened, people would just run away. The item "return of the body to its homeland" was sacred.

V.Sh. Have you been to Damascus itself?
PMC. In an Aeroport. They flew in and out.

V.Sh. You have not seen Syrian beauty.
PMC. No. I saw beauty when you take a city, I looked at the gaps from the hills through binoculars. It’s beautiful, there are minarets all around ... and then they went on the assault, not before.

V.Sh. Have you seen many people killed?
PMC. Enemy? Not much at first. They quite often - dropped their weapons, unloaded and fled. Then, at the end, when ours pressed them against the Kurds, there they piled a lot of them. In Deir ez-Zor, they stuffed a lot. Dozens fell.

V.Sh. Was your medicine okay?
PMC. We had a great dock. More from Donbass. Here he is smart - he saved a bunch of people. It was safe with him. He had enough medicines. They took the “spiritual” warehouses where everything is the most modern, the best. Therefore, he had freedom.

V.Sh. As I understand it, the spirits will be driven for a long time?
PMC. Since our departure, the main phase has ended. The enemy began to surrender en masse, and so en masse that the cooks from the rear units were transferred to the front lines in order to feed the surrendering ones, otherwise they did not have time.

V.Sh. Can you estimate the total losses of the brigade?
PMC. I can't speak for the whole team. But I think in six months of fighting under a hundred "two hundredths" we lost.

V.Sh. Were there protective equipment?
PMC. Armor and helmets, but we didn't wear them. When the heat is up to +39 in the shade, armor is absolutely not an option. Especially during assaults. One unit, not ours, tried to storm in body armor, helmets, so they did not reach the enemy. Then they went all over the field, collecting fighters with heat strokes. Absolutely impossible. Plus, the bulletproof vests themselves are worthless, like a bag hanging. It's very hard on him. Uncomfortable, unlike compact armors, when pressed against the body. But if pressed, overheating will be. Plus, you need to carry an individual, group weapon on yourself. If you put on all this and also a bulletproof vest, then even in normal temperature you won’t go far, and if you don’t take all this, what’s the point of going into battle?

V.Sh. How did you endure the climate?
PMC. There were a lot of diarrhea, heat strokes and age-related health problems. Because there are a lot of elderly people, and there is hypertension, and there was just nothing. In general, in PMCs, most people are over forty. There are very few young people. Young people still have many options to earn a living. But for the elderly and age there are no other ways. Especially in the provinces. And Wagner is a good option. And what? The children have grown up, nothing really holds. Again, the majority have combat experience. Who else from the first Chechnya, and someone else and Afghan "hooked". Secondly, young people - 70% did not serve in the army ...

Among themselves, they call Syria a "sandbox". Because sand. Lots of sand. And the heat is plus fifty. They know: if something happens - no one will save. And their bones will forever rot under this burning sun, and the jackals will do the rest. The contract states: non-return of cargo-200 home. Too expensive.

On Sergey's phone, instead of ringing, there is a cheerful melody:

“Our armored personnel carrier is all rumpled, but quite so on the move, beats the damned ISIS, knocks out the spirit of the bastards. Behind the plain there are immediately mountains, through the mountains there is a pass, and behind it stands Palmyra, I have been her all my life ... "

The ending is quite in the style of Cord, so I will not bring it here.

Sergei is in his early thirties, a former lawyer from Donetsk, but he hasn't worked in his specialty for four years because of the war. First - the one in Ukraine. Then here - in Syria. War without rules. So it is unlikely that he will need beautiful legal terms: they will not save you in battle.

“The deed is done, only a few hours to get ready, we helped to break the shackles of the Syrian falcons. Let the tourists come - Damascus, Palmyra, it doesn't matter. Money, women and wine are waiting for us at home ”- the bad boys in the homemade songs of the current“ luck hunters ”tend to seem even worse than they are.

I ask Sergey to let me listen to other hits of this Syrian war - he throws Viktor Tsoi's Cuckoo to me through the messenger. The chorus is almost unchanged. "My hand turned into a fist..."

I can imagine what Sergey might look like in real life: short, wiry, in a shabby green camouflage, on the index finger of his right hand there is an unhealed callus - from the trigger. And on the shoulder, too, a bruise - from a machine gun. That's just rewards for mercenaries are not provided.

We are not given awards. This is among the Cossacks - titles, orders, they love this. And they don't know how to fight. The guys ask one newcomer: “Do you even understand where you got to?” He looks like a fool: "What's wrong - you saw the car of the Islamists and throw a grenade at it." Damn, but I saw the car - tick away from it as soon as possible. She carries a ton of explosives.

Jihad mobile?

There are two types. Jihad Mobile and Inghimasi are such suicide squads that at first fight like ordinary soldiers, and when they run out of ammunition, they activate the martyr's belt. They explode, dying and taking everyone near them with them. Well this is Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how much TNT is hung on them! Their task, these crazy fanatics, is to die on the battlefield. They go for this.

Our purpose of the trip is to earn money. No patriotism. True, the Cossacks come up with some beautiful fairy tales for themselves - for example, that they go to study Orthodoxy in extreme conditions, while Syria is the cradle of Christianity, but this is also an excuse. Mostly people go to earn money. It's just that not everyone admits it openly and honestly. This is fine. We also went to earn money, not to kill. We, as recruiters, were told: you will protect communications, checkpoints, oil rigs, restore factories, and you will arrive at the place - both! - and in the assault battalion.

Did you make a contract?

If you can call it that. Let's just say: I signed the agreement. There is a list of what we must do, there are duties, but no rights. If you violate some point, for example, you drink on the front line, then you get money. Fine all the division. Although they drink little - in such heat. But vodka in Syria is good.

Where do recruiters find their potential "clients"?

Recruiters have been working in Donbas since the age of 14. But in the early years, few left. Firstly, no one even knew about Syria, and secondly, in the DPR they fought for the idea, for the salvation of the Russian world. It was then vulgarized by everyone. Now there is not clear that - whether the world, or war. Many Russian volunteers returned home. The militias dispersed too. And what we can do is nothing but to fight. If you serve in Donetsk now, you get 15,000 rubles. Here I was offered 150,000 a month, plus combat, plus for going out, and so on. I have a wife on maternity leave, two children, a son and a daughter, my parents are old. I don't make that much in a year. Even if you imagine that they will cheat and pay less, it is still better than nothing.

Do they often cheat?

- Who will behave. In general, there are two large private military companies on the market today - these are Dmitry Utkin's Wagner PMC and Turan PMC, a Muslim battalion. The very first was the "Slavic Corps", but now it is no more. There are also subcontractors, intermediaries who also recruit people. They have nothing to do with the official Russian military structures. How legal they are is also none of my business; in my opinion, they are issued through left-wing states, they are registered and licensed there - in South Africa, for example. I know that there were such organizations that offered 240 thousand rubles a month, but in reality they all get about the same - 150.

I won’t say that they just threw someone so hard: we have word of mouth, today they will throw it - tomorrow no one will go. We are all the same in this circle, everyone, in principle, knows everyone. When I was in the camp where I was trained, they paid an additional 2-3 thousand daily allowances, you can also raise a thousand bucks a month.

And not go anywhere at all?

Personally, I didn't know them. But the preparation is so-so, to be honest. A shooting range, a training ground, an educational and material part ... Among other things, they talk about the traditions of the Syrian people, such as not to accidentally violate them ... Personally, knowing how to survive in the desert helped me: there are a lot of creeping reptiles, so you take four pegs, you drive them into the sand, tie them with a woolen square thread - not a single scorpion will crawl through this woolen thread. They feel them and are afraid for some reason.

How did you get to Syria - by military aircraft? Civil?

Charter. To Latakia. We had a legend that we were peaceful builders, or something. There the sea is warm, good, but they didn’t let them go for walks separately. Although many a couple of times ran away to swim.

Disobeyed orders?

Yes, what kind of order is there ... You still don’t really know who, for the most part, goes there. It is in the Ministry of Defense that they will not sign a contract with a person with a tarnished biography. And we also had previous convictions, and those who did not find work at home, roamed around without money, former volunteers who came to Rostov for military training, militias, even ethnic Ukrainians were, including those who fought against the Donbass. Sometimes you see such a person in front of you - and you just go nuts.

Nothing sacred?

Not at all. Everything is fine. It's amazing how life can turn. When the very first fighters were sent there, there was a strict selection, they say, even a competition. Now everyone is being taken. Personally, I saw an amputee, a man without an arm, he is a machine gunner by profession. How can he shoot? .. It seems to me that recently recruiters are paid for the number of recruits, and not for the quality. That's why there are so many stupid losses.

Those Cossacks whom the ISIS executed - they were from the May group. 150 people then arrived - in the first battle they received 19 "cargo-200" ... It's just that the numbers are hiding, the minimum information is leaking to the media about what is happening. Those who were the last to arrive, they had such preparation that it is immediately clear: the suicide bombers arrived.

How much are relatives of the dead and wounded paid? Is it in the contract?

Three million - for the dead, 900 thousand - for the wound. But in fact, we have such insurance that if you get hurt, and you don’t have a bulletproof vest or a helmet, then they may not pay anything. A bronik with equipment weighs 18 kg. Who will carry him around in such heat?! This is also fined. But the relatives of those two whose heads were cut off will make all the due payments for sure, because the press made a fuss.

They are heroes! They did not swear allegiance to ISIS (banned in Russia - E.K.) ...

Don't make me swear. They freaked out. Because normal boys would not have surrendered alive.

What a nightmare - with this cutting off heads!

Ours are also cut off. And what about dragging the dead in the desert on yourself? At first, 5,000 rubles were paid for one head of an ISIS member. The guys dragged a whole bunch of them ... Therefore, they dropped the price - we need to stop terrifying the local population - lately they have been paying like a thousand. I'm definitely not interested, because I don't do it myself.

And these were definitely Islamist fanatics, and not civilians?

I'm telling you exactly. Syria is now divided into zones. Pink - Damascus, Latakia and surroundings. You can't touch anyone there. There is also a gray zone - back and forth, and the most terrible - black, where we stand. There are no peaceful people there. All enemies.

I don’t understand why it’s impossible to launch air strikes on these countless ISIS villages without using infantry, since such crazy human losses?

This is just very clear. The use of infantry, soldiers, is much cheaper than aviation. It's always been that way. Soldiers are meat.

In ancient times, there were rules in the armies of all countries: for the first three days, the city, captured by the troops, is given at the mercy of the winners. Is there such a thing now?

I guess, yes. Everything you find in the liberated villages is yours. You only need to pay money. These fanatics have their own - gold dinars, silver dirhams, copper fakes ... Although they are made of pure gold, you cannot take them with you. They bear the symbols of ISIS - the "Islamic State" (banned in Russia), their possession and distribution is equated with a criminal offense and support for terrorism. Who needs such a headache?

What about after the fight? How are you resting? You are not an official army, so concerts of famous guest performers from Moscow are not supposed to be for you? ..

Yes, it gets boring too. But you can buy a wife. A virgin from a good family costs 100 bucks. For a year. Kalyma type. If you take forever, then it is 1500-2000 dollars. It's easier to buy there than to look here. I know guys who straightened documents for such brides and then took them with them to Russia. In general, women in the war are very helpful - at least by brightening up our life. But basically only officers can afford them.

Are they well fed?

They are fed to death. But water is tight. There is technical and there is drinking. But technical drink is not allowed. And drinking is not enough.

How about weapons?

That's the problem with weapons. The equipment is old, dead, shaggy years ... They also give out Chinese machine guns. It is clear that people chip in and buy weapons themselves - it’s a pleasure to live, and since cash is not very good, many spend so-called cigarette money on this: about 100-200 dollars a month.

Is the salary transferred to the card?

As you wish. Usually on a card to your wife or someone you say yes.

After the death, does the non-disclosure agreement also apply to relatives?

In fact yes. They are warned that it is better not to exaggerate this topic if they want to be paid for everything. In the end, the man went there voluntarily, no one forced him. It is clear that no one will drag his corpse back to his homeland, because it is expensive, and there is no special point. But the three million that will be given for the dead, the living will earn in two years only ...

Do you consider yourself a mercenary?

No. I was placed in such conditions. In the Donbass in the ranks from the very beginning of hostilities and almost to the very end. I had convictions. And I personally know those who would never agree to die for money - only for the Motherland and the idea. But gradually nothing remained of the ideas, and the war turned into business as usual. Ordinary people also have to adapt. But I did not betray myself.

And who was betrayed?

There was a case. Our guys were on fire. It happened. And they burned for a long time. It was terrible to watch them suffer. It was necessary to shoot them, and it would have been merciful, but I could not ... Perhaps this can be considered a betrayal.

Do you believe in God?

- Don't know. I must believe in something. In good, in bad. Don't know. All I know is that killing is wrong. And I do not like it.

Simple bookkeeping

One of the leaders of a private military company gave us a comment on condition of anonymity.

“I believe that in fact there is no criminal offense here. Yes, an article hangs over all PMC members - participation in illegal armed formations, or even the leadership of an illegal armed formation, up to 20 years in prison, but let's think about the fact that now a new type of war is being fought all over the world. Recall the experience of the same Americans, all their operations in Iraq or Afghanistan are mainly carried out by PMCs. The French Foreign Legion is generally supported by the government. So it's stupid to pretend to be naive young ladies and say that we shouldn't have this, because it's bad.

This is business. We will not capture the market, others will take our place. But while Russian PMCs are beginning to gradually push the Western ones: because ours are undemanding and take on everything, yes, they are deceived. But cheating is also a life experience.

According to the rates, we get about 5 thousand dollars per person per month. According to the contract, you pay 2000 plus 500 for related expenses. There remains a net profit - 2500, multiplied by the number of fighters.

In the compartment of the Quiet Don branded train, which departed in early November 2017 from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, they washed a strange-looking medal. In this award, the symbols of eras hostile to each other were clearly visible - the Prussian Iron Cross, the Soviet five-pointed star and the White Guard Order of the Ice Campaign. Three men of different ages, approximately 20, 35 and 45 years old, did not fall into drunken courage afterwards; the awards imperceptibly disappeared somewhere so quickly that I did not have time to ask about the origin of the strange medal.

However, the path was not a short one, and little by little, at first from fragments of phrases, then, when common tastes and memories were found, a whole picture began to take shape from frank conversations. The three men were returning from a six-month business trip to Syria.

We went under a contract concluded with the well-known private military company (PMC) "Wagner", although the document, of course, does not contain either this pseudonym call sign or the name of its owner - Dmitry Utkin, who, by the way, in the same November headed Evgeny's restaurant holding Prigozhin, also known as the "Chief Chef of the Kremlin".

They flatly refused to give the official name of the organization that hired them, saying only that this name is constantly changing. The legal address is located in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, on Ilyinsky Highway, near the military town of Pavshino. The term of the contract is from three to six months. The contract is signed on the basis of the PMC in Molkino. The future fighter reads a multi-page document, signs, and he remains in the company's office. It is strictly forbidden to communicate with representatives of the media, so in this collective interview they appear as Sergey Ts., Gennady F. and Stepan M. These men were among those who put an end to the long war in the ancient lands of Syria.

On December 6, 2017, the Interfax news agency will officially report, citing the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, that “Syria has been completely liberated from terrorists, all ISIS gangs have been destroyed, more than a thousand settlements have been liberated and the main communications have been released.” But only in these victorious reports not a word is said about the contribution that ordinary soldiers of private military companies made to the victory.

MEETING PLACE: MOLKINO BASE The 10th separate GRU special-purpose brigade (military unit 51532) is located near the Molkino farm in the Krasnodar Territory. The base of PMC "Wagner" closely adjoins it. Soldiers came here from all over the country. First, they had to pass a medical commission and various admission tests. – There was a medical board, but the selection was more visual: arms and legs in place – and forward, – says Sergey. - They took everyone in a row, because PMCs suffered heavy losses in Syria. It was also required to run 3 km, wring out 40–50 times (this was rated as “good” and “excellent”). Many did not pass these standards, but were enrolled.

A much more serious test was considered a lie detector. Each candidate passes a polygraph. For example, out of eight people in the group in which Gennady was, only two successfully passed the lie detector, including himself. On what others were cut off, what kind of lie the PMC psychologists were looking for, Gennady still does not imagine. But, in his opinion, this selection definitely did not concern the criminal past of the candidates. The personnel accepted under the contract were distributed among the "brigades". These were not army brigades in their traditional form, the PMC brigades consisted of only 300 to 400 people, depending on the tasks they faced.

FLIGHT ROSTOV-ON-DON - DAMASK We departed from Rostov-on-Don International Airport on April 25, 2017, on a regular charter flight. They didn’t put a visa in the passport, the border guards stamped only the departure mark (and upon return, another arrival mark). The Syrian border service does not appear in the documents at all. In total, one and a half hundred PMC fighters flew in the Boeing, in a day or two the second half of the “brigade” arrived in the same way.

They flew to Damascus in civilian clothes, changed clothes already at the Syrian base, that is, in the middle of the desert. They brought military uniforms with them, everyone dressed according to their taste. The desert uniform of the British special forces SAS is considered the most comfortable, the best in strength and color, then comes the uniform of the American special forces. So in appearance, the Russian fighters did not differ from the detachment of the Anglo-Saxon special forces. The Syrian uniform, according to the unanimous opinion of the interlocutors, is of very poor quality.

OIL FIELDS OF ASH-SHAIR The PMC fighters did not pass the control at the Damascus airport, they immediately got into the buses - and forward. Where? “The rank and file are never told where, how long to go and what they will do,” says Stepan. – We were brought to the area of ​​the oil fields of Ash-Shair, where we stayed for three months and only after three months did they learn the name of this place. 40 kilometers northwest of Palmyra. Landed right in the mountain desert. Some did not have tents, in particular Sergei, and for the first month and a half he lived "in the open air", although in the mountainous area at that time it was raining and cold. Only later were state-owned tents issued.

In total, three brigades of PMCs were assembled in that place, that is, about a thousand people. What did you do? “Mountains guarded,” says Gennady. - On the opposite mountain range, the ISIS spirits were sitting. They were bombarded all the time by aircraft. Armored vehicles were transported past us every day - tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, about 60 units in total. Apparently, there was a preparation for the offensive. At the end of August, the offensive began, and the fighters went through the mountains to the city of Akerbat. They descended into the valley, one by one they took the adjacent villages.

"STORMS" AND STORM OF AKERBAT The strike force of the PMC brigade in Syria is commonly called "storms" among themselves (with the emphasis on the last syllable). In addition to "assaults", there is also a heavy weapons platoon, at its disposal are mortars, ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), heavy machine guns, AGS (automatic grenade launchers). Fire Support Squad. An armored group with an indefinite amount of equipment - from one infantry fighting vehicle to several armored personnel carriers and tanks, whoever is lucky. The combat strength of the brigade is about 200 people, those who have at least some combat experience. The remaining 100-150 are the so-called staff guys, servants, personal drivers of commanders.

The brigades are commanded by retired special forces officers (not a single regular officer), there are practically no army officers. - For example, the commander of our brigade, - says Gennady, - the Syrian chief turned and offered several tanks for nothing, since the Arabs did not have crews for them. The “assault” is the first to go on the attack, followed by a platoon of heavy weapons - mortars, heavy machine guns, ATGMs, etc.

The enemy set traps, let them take several suburban villages almost without hindrance, and just before the city of Akerbat, the brigade ran into an iron defense, where dozens died. There were specific battles here, for each house. Documents of ISIS members were found (they were handed over to special officers of PMCs), notebooks with prayers in Russian came across, there were many Uzbek names on the lists. “Akerbat was taken only by Russian brigades of PMCs,” says Sergey, the other two nod their heads in agreement. - The Syrians came up at the final stage to film for the TV news. We even hid so as not to get into the frame when the Syrians posed with a heroic look.

OFFICIAL SUMMARY OF THE CAPTURE OF AKERBAT So, the fighters of the Wagner PMC claim that they captured Akerbat on their own, the Syrian government troops did not take part in the assault. The official version claims exactly the opposite, the role of PMCs is not marked by a word.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, “On September 2, 2017, units of the 4th Panzer Division of the Syrian government forces, in cooperation with units of the 5th Volunteer Assault Corps and detachments of the military Mukhabarat, with the active support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, liberated the strategically important city of Akerbat, where “the last major center of resistance” of terrorists of the IS organization banned in Russia (“Islamic State” is an international terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation).

The government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta in those days reported the commander of the Russian military group in Syria, Colonel-General Sergei Surovikin, who, in particular, noted that “to support the offensive of the Syrian army in the Akerbat area, Russian aviation launched 329 bombing and missile strikes, as a result which destroyed 27 armored vehicles of militants, 48 ​​pickup trucks with large-caliber weapons installed and more than 1,000 militants. The general also said that ISIS in Akerbat used an unprecedented number of suicide bombers. According to him, “from 15 to 25 militants with martyrs' belts and four to five jihad-mobiles were destroyed daily.

But the general kept silent about the fact that this work of destruction was done by the guys from the Wagner PMC.

SPIRIT - Almost all ISIS wear a martyr's belt, - says Stepan. - Such a beautiful thing, neat, light weight. Plastic packaging filled with transparent gel, in which there are many, many metal balls. Because of this, we did not take a single spirit prisoner.

One night, the ISIS foolishly stuck in our village. Most, of course, we immediately killed, and a few were driven around the village for some time. One spirit, apparently seriously wounded, called for help for a long time, and then an explosion rumbled. An adjacent wall collapsed from the explosion. It turns out that he was twenty meters away from us.

In the morning they cleaned, pits and cellars were thrown with grenades. “The tactics of the spirits are simple: when there is a night skirmish, two or three martyrs get close and explode,” added Gennady. - It happened once or twice a week: an ISIS member would approach the wall of our shelter and explode. Quite a few died from such night sorties: eight in one battle, fifteen in another, ten in a third. All the locals had left the village by that time. In general, we didn’t encounter civilians,” Sergei assured.

DEYR-EZ-ZOR: SYRIAN STALINGRAD They took Akerbat and the PMC fighters were told: it's time to go home. We were already changing into civilian clothes, and suddenly an order: to the cars in full gear. We drove through the desert for about seven hours, drove three hundred kilometers to the east and found ourselves not far from the city of Deir ez-Zor. There were two Russian brigades of PMCs that had already crossed the Euphrates on pontoons when the operation to unblock Deir ez-Zor was underway.

We were given the task of freeing the adjacent island from the ISIS. For about two months they carried out this task, the main losses were suffered in this place, mainly undermined by mines. The RIA Novosti reports then said: “On September 5, the forward detachments of the Syrian army broke through the three-year blockade of Deir ez-Zor and went on the offensive on the eastern outskirts of the city. Having broken through the encirclement of the air force base, and after knocking out the terrorists from strategic heights in the southwest, government troops reached the western bank of the Euphrates River and crossed it, thereby forcing out terrorist detachments in the direction of the Iraqi border and creating a ring around the residential areas captured by the Islamic State terrorist group. quarters of Deir ez-Zor.

Military expert Viktor Baranets commented on the lifting of the blockade from Deir ez-Zor: “The city of Deir ez-Zor is of strategic importance for the further actions of terrorists in Syria. If it is taken, it will be a strategic defeat for the militants, and it will be about the same for them as in 1945 for Nazi Germany. Deir ez-Zor has the same meaning for ISIS. The defeat in Deir ez-Zor will mean that the terrorists will no longer provide active combat resistance. It will be for them not only a military, but also a moral defeat, and in front of the whole world.

- What is the blockade of Deir ez-Zor - this must be understood again in an oriental way, - said Sergey. - All those three years that the blockade lasted, cars with food and consumer goods passed unhindered. Nobody suffered from hunger. They even joked that the Syrians say: we fought here for three years, fought, the Russians came - and the war began.

“And chaos began,” Gennady laughed. In the meantime, according to Sergey, while the spirits held the defense in Ash-Shair, the Kurds sent here by the Americans captured the oil fields. At the end of September, the ISIS retreated in flank directions, and again the Russian PMC brigades had to return to "squeeze out the oil fields." – At the top, apparently, they agreed, and the Kurds moved a little, – says Sergey. – Judging by the inscriptions on the oil rigs, some of them belonged to Europeans, some to Canadians. Canadians have lost the most.

At the end of October, the term of the business trip of the fighters of the Wagner PMC ended. In those days, ISIS cut one of the two main roads connecting the east and west of Syria. They drove along a longer one - about 800 kilometers. There were no adventures.

LOSSES During the six months of the trip, the casualties of one brigade amounted to about 40 dead (“two hundredths”) and about 100 wounded (“three hundredths”). The other brigade was more “lucky”: their losses amounted to about 20 killed and 70 wounded. And in the third brigade, in the first two weeks alone, they lost about 50 killed. Most died during the lifting of the blockade of Deir ez-Zor. Thus, a tenth of the personnel died, a fifth were wounded.

MILITARY EQUIPMENT - The losses would have been much less, - says Sergey, - if the supply of the PMC group had not been so bad, just plain bad. Broken armored cars, lost five trucks in three days, there was nothing even to transport personnel. And the losses from this are high ... and that's it - we got up! Collapse. No one is going anywhere, God forbid to take out the wounded. And experience says that it is high time to transfer fighters to armored vehicles designed for no more than 10 people. Although a year ago the equipment was decent - both weapons and equipment.

“It's just a beautiful television picture: tanks are moving in a row across the desert, infantry fighting vehicles are following them, helicopters are circling above them,” says Stepan. - In fact, there was very little technology. Our “armada” moved partly on foot, and partly in KamAZ and Ural trucks. If an ATGM hits a truck, then the losses are, of course, huge.

And this saving of our military plushies turned into huge losses. Some of the leaders responsible for the military supply of the brigades, apparently, reported to the top how much was saved. And now, for three brigades, that is, one and a half thousand people, only five night sights were issued! - What about the spirits? Stepan says. - For example, 30-40 people usually sit in positions, and so they are given two or three night sights. When the spirits go on a night attack, five “assaults” see them with sin in half, the rest do not see a damn thing. Fathers-commanders say: you shoot at flashes. And for this you need to stick your head out of hiding. And to get into the night sight of an ISIS man, who definitely won’t play the fool, he will immediately shoot - and you won’t have time to notice the flashes. So it turns out: the spirits see everything, and most of the “assaults” are blind. And so the losses are huge.

- So how should it be? Sergei says. - Like in special forces: each fighter has a night sight and one of the three has a thermal imaging sight. And so - lead people to slaughter. But the PMC bosses may have a lot of money, but they are not going to buy new equipment.

With my own eyes I saw a unit armed with three-rulers, revolvers, Degtyarev machine guns, even Maxim machine guns really were. And for the first time I had a three-ruler. Bulletproof vests from the time of the capture of Kabul. The tanks are all "prize", that is, captured from the Arabs, some resemble a colander. When he was indignant with his superiors, he heard: “Darling, why are you in a fairy tale? Whatever you give, fight with it."

MILITARY TRAINING My interlocutors divided the forces that fought on the side of Assad into three categories according to their fighting qualities. The lowest place is occupied by the Syrians, the middle place is occupied by the Fatimids (as the militants from Afghanistan were called in PMCs) and the Palestinians, the top one – by the Russians.

“Once a detachment of the Fatimids captured a bridgehead, then redeployed, and government troops took their place, immediately raising their flag,” Sergey said. – And our experienced fighter, who visited Syria five times, predicted: if the Syrian flag appears over the positions in the evening, then the ISIS flag will be here in the morning. We took it as a joke. And in the morning we woke up from a frantic clatter: 300-400 Syrian soldiers fled shouting: “The ISIS tank has arrived!” And indeed: a black banner has already been raised over the positions of government troops.

“Russians are unsurpassed fighters, especially in defense,” says Stepan. “No one withstood our attacks, no one. For six months, not a single enemy withstood the attacks of the "assaults". Neither in Akerbat nor in the Deir ez-Zor area. “Give us ISIS equipment,” Sergey added, “they would have liberated all of Syria in two weeks.” There was an impression that no one wants to win this war - neither ISIS nor the Syrian army.

“Even the Fatimids are well-equipped,” Gennady said. - I myself saw how they drove “jihads” on their motorcycles across the desert (this is the name of the Igilov pickup truck with weapons; it differs from the “shahidka” - the same car, but stuffed with explosives). They filled up this "jihad" as if there was nothing to do. But is it possible to fight like that with our equipment ?! Our birders go on foot, together with the infantry, there are three of them: one drags the installation, two - one rocket each (each of them weighs 25 kilograms). ISIS also has three pilots, but they are on two motorcycles. On one motorcycle - installation and two people, on the other - the third with two missiles. They made a fuss and disappeared in a minute.

“I personally saw how a Dukhov ATGM knocked out three vehicles within 10 minutes – an armored personnel carrier and two trucks,” says Sergey. - The level of training of the Syrian troops is not only zero, but, one might say, minus, - Gennady picked up. - For example, out of 60 armored vehicles brought, as already mentioned, to the combat area, about 20 ended up in the hands of the ISIS spirits who were in Akerbat. In general, tanks in Syria are a challenge prize. There is even a joke on this topic: Russia supplies tanks to the Syrians, the Syrians hand them over to ISIS, the Russians come, take the tanks from the ISIS and receive a bonus for this. We hand it over to the Syrians again - and everything starts all over again, the tank circulates around Syria until it is burned.

- Personally, I saw how the Syrian special forces went into reconnaissance, Sergei recalls. “We walked about seven kilometers and started yelling on the radio that they had run out of water, several people were hit (and these are the indigenous people of Syria). And they returned without completing the task. The Russians even had to bear the sun-struck Arabs on their backs.

I agree with Gennady: zero level of preparation. “The whole of Syria is about two Moscow regions, most of it is desert,” Stepan concludes. - It is enough to free a few enclaves and a valley - and that's it! And let the spirits of the steppe hares ride through the desert as much as they like. Work - for a month or two, but no one needs it. Generals earn money in the war, tanks and weapons are decommissioned, ISIS trades with everyone almost officially.

STAFF OF WAGNER PMC - Despite the fact that many PMC fighters served in the army and special forces, I won't be mistaken if I say that 90% do not understand where they are going, - says Sergey. - The desire to make money knocks off the brain completely. Therefore, having got into a real trouble, they declare that they came here not to die, but to earn. These are called "five hundred", that is, deserters and refuseniks. They are immediately sent to rigging teams, that is, to loaders of shells, etc.

- And in life, those who came to Syria are mostly losers, - says Gennady. - As a rule, former cops, convicts and military men. About 40% of the personnel served time for serious crimes - murders, robberies, etc. PMC fighters even greet each other like this: “Hi, losers!” It is noticeable that for many months before a business trip, or even years, they thumped without drying out. In Syria, it is forbidden to drink, the heads are a little enlightened, they give a vow to tie for the rest of their lives. They return to Russia with a million in their pockets and break into such a peak, a month later they crawl to the base without pants.

EARNINGS OF THE "GENTLEMEN OF LUCK" A year or two ago, according to Sergey, the fighters of the PMC "Wagner" earned 310-350 thousand rubles a month (240 thousand - salary plus 3 thousand a day - fighting). In the spring of this year, they had 300 thousand each (with a salary of 220 thousand), and those who arrived in the fall earned an average of 200-210 thousand (the salary dropped to 150 thousand).

- What is the reason for the drop in earnings? Stepan asked. - I think with the fact that they steal everything, they steal everything. At some point, people lose their heads and begin to steal without a twinge of conscience. We suspect that the top pays are still decent, but a little lower they come up with various restrictions that are associated with the salary. For example, there is a clause in the contract that says that a business trip starting from the fourth month is considered a long one and an additional thousand rubles are paid for each day. When someone reminded the boss about this point, he received the following answer in a greatly softened form: “Are you crazy? You get so much already!”

- What about insurance? I ask. How much is paid in case of death? “You see,” Sergei says, “according to some rumors, three and a half million, according to others, five million. Personally, I did not see anything about this in my contract. Although I could have looked: the contract is multi-page, and besides, the principle of time trouble works. It says that you agree that you may not be taken out as a corpse. Also, according to rumors, 50 thousand are paid for a minor injury, up to 300 thousand plus treatment for a more severe one. They say that the treatment is good - in the military hospitals of Rostov-on-Don, Kislovodsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, etc. Good conditions, highly qualified doctors. But there is one principle: no disabilities.

“I am ambivalent about these private military companies,” adds Stepan. - On the one hand, they deceive, and it's a shame. And on the other hand, if you look at the situation as if from the outside, the PMC removes unnecessary elements from civilian life (literally, the fighter spoke about his comrades, and therefore about himself. - A.Ch.).

As it turned out later, Sergey brought one and a half million rubles from Syria. I gave out debts, bought a night sight, binoculars, warm clothes, and other equipment for little things. I was running out of money, just to get from Moscow to Krasnodar. – What work is left in Syria? Protect oil fields, factories. Throwing attacks will no longer be.