The Moscow Patriarchate has insisted and most people have accepted the idea that Kirill has expanded the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Africa to punish the Alexandria Patriarchate for recognizing Ukrainian autocephaly. But the...
Personnel of Russian private military companies, which are illegal according to Russian law, have appealed to the International Criminal Court in the Hague to launch an investigation into the organizers of the Russian PMCs and to seek...
Despite the fading of the Wagner private military company which attracted so much attention earlier because of evidence of its use by the Kremlin in its wars in Ukraine and Syria and the company’s increasing use of criminals rather...
Many countries have private military companies, Vladimir Pastukhov says; and there is no reason that Russia should not as well, especially in a world where many military tasks are outsourced and where there are some tasks states do not...
Moscow has now dispatched another of what it calls “a private military company” to fight in Syria, a reflection of its desire to avoid having regular army units there, its unwillingness to rely on the Wagner group alone, and...
After the Wagner disaster in Syria, Russian and Western journalists reported about its training facility near Molkino where members of that “private” armed grouping were trained. But the Ukrainian portal Obozrevatel observes...
There are many differences between the Russian seizure of Crimea and Russian actions in the Donbas, but perhaps the most important if sometimes ignored one is this, Pavlo Kazarin says. Crimea was carried out by the regular Russian army,...
With the passing of the World War II generation, few of whom now remain, Vladimir Putin appears ready to make “veterans of hybrid wars” a new symbol of the idea that Russia today is “a besieged fortress” and...
The Russian State Duma will soon be taking up draft legislation regularizing the status of nominally “private” military companies, even though such mercenaries are banned by Russian law. And among the first places they may be...
PMC “Wagner” has been in existence for several years. Hundreds of their mercenaries have fought in Ukraine. The head of the SBU maintains the SBU has detailed information about many of the mercenaries. 95% of them are Russian...
In October 2022, a few weeks before the Ukrainian Army liberated Kherson, Russian soldiers parked several school buses next to the Regional Art Museum named after Oleksii Shovkunenko. Over four days, the invaders loaded their vehicles with...
