Wagner in Libya – combat and influence

The private military company Wagner Group is the most decisive player in the military strategy of the Libyan national army, headed by Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Acting as a Russian foreign legion without the constraints of international or Russian law, it has become an instrument of power play for Vladimir Putin. Before addressing Wagner Group, it is wise to understand the roots of Russian institutional mercenarism and the reasons why Wagner is the product of a long process that has always skirted the edge of legality in Russia.

As a key figure connected with Wagner, Yevgeny Pirigozhin has become an icon of Russian Private Military Companies (PMCs). In short, Pirigozhin, (known as “Putin’s chef”) is an oligarch, exclusive supplier of catering to the Kremlin, and a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. As a consequence of his connections and money, and with the help of Dmitri Utkin, the former special forces officer in charge of military affairs he suggested that the Russian President create Wagner to deal with the Kremlin’s secret military operations. In reality, the legal and historical background of the Russian security world is far more complex and dates back to the post-Chechen War period. The use of PMCs in Vladimir Putin’s Russia that emerged in recent years is not new but built on centuries-old Russian practice.

The use of proxy groups to enforce internal laws or in military campaigns is a tradition in the world’s largest country that was once an empire. Russia has always made exceptions to the “state monopoly of force” concept. In its perception of governance, the central state could delegate this monopoly to auxiliary ethnic or religious groups provided that they paid full allegiance to the Prince/Czar/State. The Cossacks are a perfect example of this.[1]

The term “Cossack” can be traced back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and originally referred to socially constructed groups of men living as nomadic traders, mercenaries and pirates. It did not refer to an ethnic or religious group but rather a form of social identity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Cossack groups became a threat to newly developing states by attacking settlements on their borders. They also represented potential military resources for the Moscow state, which was gradually developing and expanding as new territories were conquered and the state needed to defend and establish them as Russian territories. The Russian state eventually negotiated a contract with the Cossacks, granting them special rights over natural resources, trade, and a certain amount of administrative autonomy in the areas where they established themselves in exchange for settling and defending these territories on behalf of the state. In particular, they acted as a barrier to Muslim expansion in present-day Ukraine and southern Russia. This status vis-à-vis the Tsar persisted until the Bolshevik Revolution because the Cossacks fought on more than one side. Some fought in independent Cossack armies, others fought for the Whites, others for the Reds, and many fought for all of them. From 1919 onwards, they were subjected to a repressive campaign that killed more than one and a half million of them, and then suffered Stalin’s vengeance for having decided to fight for Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Today, Vladimir Putin makes extensive use of the Cossack militia to rule in Southwest Russia or to fight alongside the independence fighters in Donbass and Crimea. In 2005, the Russian President signed a law entitled, “On the State Service of the Russian Cossacks,” which gave them the status of a state-supported militia with a government salary. This law granted more than 600,000 officially registered Cossacks in Russia the right to perform various functions usually controlled by the state. Functions such as defending border regions, guarding national forests, organizing military training for young cadets, fighting terrorism, protecting local government buildings and administrative sites, and providing the vague service of “defence of social order.” Another example of the use of proxies in the foreign wars of contemporary Russia was the deployment of Muslim Military Policemen (Chechens and Ingush) to Syria from 2018 to fight, occupy, and administer the security of cities “liberated” by the Russian army. [2]

Describing the evolution of Russian PMCs and the process that led to the media coverage of the Wagner Group

Following the collapse of the USSR, the Red Army was in total ruin, fragmented between many newly-created countries with no budget, no leadership, and drained of human resources. Entire units were demobilized, such as the Alpha unit, one of the two special intervention groups of the Federal Security Service (FSB). The first war in Chechnya would eventually deplete the latter and many soldiers, specialists and officers found themselves in the international labour market in the early 1990s. At that time a South African company, Executive Outcomes, was recruiting pilots and aeronautical engineers to operate the helicopters and cargo planes used for its operations. Meanwhile, many former soldiers worked as bodyguards and security guards in hundreds of small security companies that were created in Russia in the early 1990s.

One of the first security companies to export military know-how was Antiterror-Orel. Created in 2003 by former members of the special forces in the city of Orel south of Moscow, it initially had the status of a non-governmental training school. The school trained Russian companies that were active abroad on security measures. After the second Iraq war, these mainly oil and mining companies asked Orel to send protection teams to their sites. This dispatch of men was the starting point for the creation of several private military companies operating in Iraq, such as Top Rent Security, Redut-Antiterror and especially Moran Security Group, a company that still exists and is active in maritime anti-piracy and protection.  At the height of the Syrian civil war in 2013, Moran Security Group (MSG) was called in by the government of Bashar al-Assad for a mission to protect and retake oil facilities in eastern Syria.

Since private military activity is illegal in Russia, the owners of MSG created a new Hong Kong-based company called Slavonic Corp that sent 240 men to fight in Syria between 2014-2015. Among these men was Dmitri Utkin, a former officer belonging to the 2nd Special Forces Brigade of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) in Pskov. He distinguished himself on the ground in Syria by mastering operational art and being a good commander. His radio call sign at the time was Wagner, in homage to the German composer Utkin was passionate about.

Back in Russia, he created a training centre in 2015 in Molkino in the Krasnodar region not far from the Georgian border. The school gradually turned into a military base adjacent to the one occupied by the GRU 10th Special Forces Brigade. This is where the Wagner Group was born.

The company received political and economic support from the Kremlin during its involvement in the war in the Donbass from 2015.[3]

History of Wagner in Libya

The fall of Muammar Gaddafi was very badly received by Vladimir Putin, who was Prime Minister of Russia in 2011. At the time, he openly criticized his President, Dmitri Medvedev, for not having applied the Russian veto against the UN resolution imposing the No Flight Zone in Libya. His 2012 return to the helm of the Russian Federation was marked by Moscow’s renewed interest in Libyan affairs and a slow rapprochement with Libya’s new strongman Marshal Khalifa Haftar.[4]

The first Russian mercenary appearance in the region came in early 2017 with a demining contract awarded by the Libyan National Army to the Russian military company RSB-Group in the port complex of Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city.[5]

The Wagner Group first appeared in May 2018 during the LNA-led offensive to retake the city of Derna, the last stronghold of Islamist militias and the Islamic State in eastern Libya. In March 2018, leaders of the private military company mentioned a forthcoming dispatch of troops to Libya to journalists of Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty)[6]. On November 7, 2018, during his visit to Moscow, Marshal Khalifa Haftar met with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Yevgeny Peregozhin. It was not until March 2019 that detailed reports of the presence of 300 mercenaries from Wagner in a base in Benghazi surfaced together with their participation in the various operations of the LNA. It is also reported that an amount of 150 million dollars was paid by the United Arab Emirates to cover Wagner’s operations in Libya. This Gulf state, which in the past deployed men and mercenaries and has an airbase in Al Khadim in eastern Libya, has always denied funding the Russian private military company.[7]

Wagner’s real involvement began after the LNA’s general offensive to reconquer Libya on April 3, 2019. Initially timid during the first phase, which covered the South, its activities became more acute after the capture of Sebha and the offensive on Tripoli. From September 2019 and the arrival of the first Turkish military advisers in Tripoli to assist the National Accord Government (GNA), the fighting became more intense and Wagner began to count its first casualties. The use of attack drones by Turkey reversed the course of the battle for Tripoli during September and October 2019. Sources, including the Russian opposition media, Meduza, reported 35 dead in bombings[8]. In el Sebaa, 65 km south of the capital, Wagner mercenaries left many clues to their presence before retreating.

On December 12, 2019, Khalifa Haftar announced that he had given the order to launch the “final battle” for control of Tripoli. He declared, “The zero hour has struck for the large and total assault expected by all free and honest Libyans.” Turkey responded to this declaration by sending massive numbers of troops, vast amounts of equipment, and thousands of Syrian mercenaries to Tripoli and Misrata.[9] This signalled the withdrawal of the NLA to the south and its defeat in Tripoli, which culminated in the ANL’s loss of the al Watya airbase and the fall of Tarhuna, the last pro-Haftar stronghold in the west, on June 5, 2020. The defeat marked a change of strategy for Wagner. Their new mission was to stop the Turkish army and the GNA forces from advancing eastward, to defend Sirte and the Libyan Oil Crescent. This mission evolved during 2020 and 2021 into the construction of a defence line separating Tripolitania from Cyrenaica and Fezzan.[10]

The fighters, their salaries, and their motivation

Wagner Group is estimated to have had up to 3,000 men under its command in Libya the majority of whom are Slavs, mainly from Russia, but also from Belarus, Ukraine, the autonomist regions of Ukraine (DNR, Novarossia, Crimea), Albania and Serbia. According to Meduza’s[11] investigation, soldiers are offered a salary of 240,000 rubles per month (US$3,200) and up to double that for officers and specialists (gunners, snipers, sappers, anti-aircraft operators, drone pilots and aviation personnel). They are not always highly trained or ex-special forces personnel, many are basic operators with a simple military background.

Recruitment is done by word of mouth, or through ex-military associations. Recruiters canvass potential candidates with little information about the location or nature of the contract. Once recruited, they undergo coordination training at the Wagner training centre near Krasnodar or at the Vesley farm near Rostov na Dunu, which is part of the Russian army.

Alliances, equipment, tactics and location

On May 26, 2020, Russia sent fighters, bombers and helicopters to Libya. Mig-29 fighters and Su-24s transited through the Russian base of Hmeimim in Syria. AFRICOM accused Wagner Group of operating the aircraft in offensive missions in Libya[12]. These aircraft are not the only heavy equipment received and operated by Wagner in Libya. According to several sources and documents, the Russian PMC also received at least one Pantsir S1 air defence vehicle, different from those used by the LNA and Wagner and “on loan” from the United Arab Emirates. To protect its aircraft, Wagner used P-18 Spoonrest radars in addition to the LNA radars.

For their armoured ground movements Wagner’s “musicians” use armoured vehicles manufactured in Russia by a company belonging to the Yevgeny Pirigozhin group of companies. The vehicle is called a Valkyrie, Chekan, Shchuka or Wagner Wagon[13], and is the MRAP built on a URAL chassis by the company EVRO POLIS LLC. This same company signed protection contracts with the Syrian state in the past and it possibly provides legal cover for its activities abroad.

According to Oryx Blog, Wagner uses a wide range of weapons and equipment and has also carried out repairs to the Libyan army’s weapons. Among the weapons imported by Wagner in violation of the embargo on arms deliveries to Libya are[14] MRAP GAZ Tigr-M, D-30 122mm guns, and MSTA 152mm Howitzers. More specific to the region, in terms of small arms, Wagner’s troops use AK-103s and especially the Osiris T-5000 sniper rifle, which is completely new to the region.

Wagner operated a few drones during its operations, namely, Zala 421-16Es and Orlan 10s. For its operations in Libya, Wagner’s mercenaries use Antonov 28 aircraft belonging to two air transport companies, Jenis Air and Space Cargo, both named by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya for possible arms embargo violations. For foreign travel, Wagner’s men and equipment use Russian 223rd Flight Wing cargo planes with mandatory stops at bases in Hmeimim, Syria, or Sidi Berrani, Egypt.

Wagner also used prohibited weapons and techniques during its withdrawal from southern Tripoli in 2020, such as MON-50, 90 and 100 anti-personnel mines, which are prohibited by the Ottawa Convention.  Some reports indicate that as they fled Tripoli in the summer of 2020, Wagner’s musicians booby-trapped numerous buildings and even left behind a booby-trapped Teddy bear, as confirmed in a report by Amnesty International.[15]

Who are Wagner’s allies on the ground?

Wagner’s mercenaries have always found it difficult to collaborate with other Libyan militias or with the brigades of the Libyan National Army. The only actual collaboration between Wagner and a Libyan militia was with the Kaniat (7th brigade of the LNA)[16] during the evacuation of Tarhuna.

Wagner’s musicians enjoyed working with the Sudanese Janjaweed because of their fighting spirit. They helped the Russians stop the GNA’s counter-offensive towards Sirte in September 2020. There are between 3,000 and 6,000 Sudanese fighters in Libya who are based near al-Jufrah and the headquarters taken by Wagner in late 2020.[17] Another military force stationed near Wagner that collaborated with the LNA and the Russian company was the Chadian militia FACT (Le Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad) [18] between April 2020 and April 2021. Its ground offensives were much appreciated by Wagner.

However, in May 2020, the Russians made a strategic decision to reinforce Wagner with Syrian fighters. So, Moscow commissioned Colonel Alexander Zorin, who was the head of the reconciliation commission in Syria to recruit mercenaries. According to Foreign Policy magazine, Zorin, better known in Syria as “the godfather” of the reconciliation agreements between the regime and rebels in Ghouta, Deraa and Quneitra, had visited southern Syria in early April 2020, a region considered particularly fertile ground for Russian recruitment, not only because of endemic poverty but also because of the lack of support from any other regional or global power. Many rebels in the region had already pledged allegiance to Assad in July 2018 after the U.S. denied them additional aid. In cooperation with Assad’s intelligence officials, Zorin reportedly began negotiations with several rebel groups to send them to fight in Libya.

More than 3,000 Syrians joined Assad during this period for salaries of US$1,000 for troops and US$5,000 for commanders.[19]

What are their techniques on the ground?

Wagner is somewhat avant-garde when preparing for battles and wars or ensuring orderly withdrawal. In the case of Libya, they actively participated in the preparation of the offensive against Tripoli. The rationale behind their involvement was to prepare for a transition from a period of peace to a period of crisis. Their expertise in Libya was, for example, acts of sabotage, elimination of key personnel, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and target identification. They played a key role in the war against Bayraktar drones by identifying their storage locations or landing runways to be bombed by the LNA.

Wagner may have deployed up to 2,500 fighters to Libya and they were organized into four companies. The main one was a special forces company for reconnaissance in force, a tank company, a combined artillery group (MSTA, D-30, BM-21 Grad), intelligence units, logistics units, and a battalion headquarters. Compared to Syria, Wagner in Libya had little tank experience but has had to increase its capabilities in war aviation and air defence. After June 2020, and Wagner’s withdrawal to al-Jufrah, a military engineering capability was integrated to build a line of defence cutting Libya in half. Militarily, Wagner now deploys the equivalent of a consolidated battle group.

Political and media influence

Russia and Wagner played a very important role politically and media-wise in the defence of Khalifa Haftar. From a political engineering perspective, Wagner also established and maintained contacts with Saif al Islam Qaddafi after his release from prison. The contacts with Saif al Islam began at the turn of 2018-2019, reports the Russian media Planeta.[20] Prigozhin delegates met at least once with Gaddafi in person and also arranged phone conversations with him. The meeting took place in Zintan, a city in western Libya in early 2019. One of the documents states that this was at a secret location.

The report of the Russian delegation on the meeting with Seif on April 3, 2019 (the date of the beginning of Haftar’s offensive), is particularly interesting. The speaker describes the circumstances of the conversation as Gaddafi being constantly distracted by watching the news about Haftar on television and ending with recommendations for further steps. The filming of incriminating videos on Haftar by Prigozhin’s forces and posting them on social media networks was suggested.

One of the architects of this attempt at Russian political interference was Maxim Shugaley[21]. On the morning of May 17, 2019, he was arrested together with his interpreter, Samer Sueifan. They spent 18 months of detention in atrocious conditions in Tripoli. Sugaley, who was 53 years old at the time went to Libya, officially as a “researcher and expert” for a “research project” launched by the “Foundation for the Protection of National Values”, a Moscow-based organization linked to Prigozhin. The chairman of the foundation’s board of directors, Alexander Malkevich, is under U.S. sanctions for his role in an alleged operation run by Prigozhin.

Shugaley was accused of secretly meeting with political figures, including Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. These meetings drew the attention of Libyan intelligence services that seized documents on laptops indicating interference in the Libyan elections. He had also conducted numerous opinion polls to feel the pulse of the street in Tripoli and other Libyan cities. In Tripoli, he was accompanied by another Russian political expert, Alexander Prokofiev, who had shortened his stay, thereby escaping arrest.

A known agent of influence, Shugaley had tried to sway the presidential election in Madagascar in favour of a pro-Russian candidate. After being released in 2020, he will be involved in the presidential election in the Central African Republic and even be part of the Russian delegation destined to meet the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, in August. He will conduct more than a hundred interviews with Afghan political figures. Another soft power channel developed by Wagner in Libya is the media and social networks.  In 2019, The Stanford Internet Observatory identified numerous traces of Russian and Wagner involvement in the media in Libya.[22]

Our analysis of social media posts targeting Libya provides one of the first known assessments of its apparent expansion into online social influence campaigns. Similar to its actions elsewhere in Africa – such as its involvement in Madagascar – the Wagner Group seems to be hedging its bets by supporting multiple candidates. The posts reviewed indicate, in support of previous reports, that Russia is also supporting Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. All site administrators are in Egypt along with at least one additional administrator in another country. Wagner also favours channelling local and regional information in large sparsely-populated countries where it is very difficult to move from one region to another. The group also financed the relocation and modernization of former state-owned (under Gaddafi) al-Jamahiriya television[23], which remains a very popular medium in Libya. Once again, it was to Egypt, Wagner’s home base, that the studios of this television station were transferred.

Outlook

On 13 December 2021, EU foreign ministers decided to impose sanctions on the Russian private military contractor Wagner as well as eight individuals and three entities linked to the group[24]. These sanctions also affected Dmitry Utkin, the alleged military commander of the Wagner Group. The EU Council press release states that “the Wagner Group has recruited, trained and sent private military operatives to conflict zones around the world to fuel violence, plunder natural resources and intimidate civilians in violation of international law, including international human rights law.” At the same time, there were reports of the evacuation of Wagner’s mercenaries to Syria and Russia. Libya specialist, Jalel Harchaoui, believes that this is disinformation after a fairly quiet 2021 for Wagner in Libya but that it is not about to leave any time soon. Following a slow 2021, the Russians in Libya are likely to turn up the heat, especially given the postponement of the Libyan presidential election to 2022.

[1]   Anna Borshchevskaya. “Russian Private Military Companies: Continuity and Evolution of the Model”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, December 18, 2019, https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/12/russian-private-military-companies-continuity-and-evolution-of-the-model/

[2]    Åse Gilje Østensen and Tor Bukkvoll, “Russian Use of Private Military and Security Companies – the implications for European and Norwegian Security”, FFI Rapport 18/01300, CR Michelsens Institutt. September 11, 2018, https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/6637-russian-use-of-private-military-and-security.pdf

[3]     New America, “Tracing Wagner’s Roots”, https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/decoding-wagner-group-analyzing-role-private-military-security-contractors-russian-proxy-warfare/tracing-wagners-roots/

[4]     Clifford J Levy and Thom Shanker. “In Rare Split, Two Leaders in Russia Differ on Libya”, New York Times, March 21, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/europe/22russia.html

[5]     Maria Tsvetkova, “Exclusive: Russian private security firm says it had armed men in east Libya”, Reuters, Aerospace and Defense, March 10, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-libya-contractors-idUSKBN16H2DM

[6]    Radio Svoboda. March 7,2018, https://www.svoboda.org/a/29084090.html

[7]    Amy Mackinnon and Jack Detsch, “Pentagon Says UAE Possibly Funding Russia’s Shadowy Mercenaries in Libya”, FP, November 30, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/pentagon-trump-russia-libya-uae/

[8]    Liliya Yapporova, “A small price to pay for Tripoli Between 10 and 35 Russian mercenaries have been killed in the Libyan Civil War. We identified several of them”, Meduza, October 2, 2019, https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/10/02/a-small-price-to-pay-for-tripoli

[9]    Jason Pack and Matthew Sinkez, “Khalifa Haftar’s Miscalculated Attack on Tripoli Will Cost Him Dearly”, FP, April 10, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/10/khalifa-haftars-miscalculated-attack-on-tripoli-will-cost-him-and-libya-dearly-un-benghazi-gna-lna/

[10] CSIS, Twitter, July 1, 2020, https://twitter.com/csis/status/1278355179960594435

[11] Meduza, “As Meduza found out, recruiters are gathering groups of mercenaries in Russia for a ‘business trip to Donbass’. What they will do there is unknown”, December 22, 2021, https://meduza.io/feature/2021/12/22/kak-vyyasnila-meduza-verbovschiki-sobirayut-v-rossii-gruppy-naemnikov-dlya-komandirovki-v-donbass-chto-oni-tam-budut-delat-neizvestno

[12] United States Africa Command, New evidence of Russian aircraft active in Libyan airspace”, Stuttgart, Germany, Jun 18, 2020, https://www.africom.mil/pressrelease/32941/new-evidence-of-russian-aircraft-active-in-li

[13] Denis Korotkov, “Our pround Ural does not surrender to the enemy”, Novayagazeta, July 11, 2020, https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/07/11/86234-vragu-ne-sdaetsya-nash-gordyy-ural

[14] Christiaan Durrant, “Tracking Arms Transfers By the UAE, Russia, Jordan and Egypt to The Libyan National Army Since 2014”, Oryx, March 23, 2021, https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/06/types-of-arms-and-equipment-supplied-to.html

[15] Amnesty, “Retaliatory attacks against civilians must be investigated and investigated and stopped”, Amnesty, June 5, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/fr/latest/news/2020/06/libya-retaliatory-attacks-against-civilians-must-be-halted-and-investigated/

[16] US Department of the Treasury, November 25, 2020, https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions/20201125

[17] Mourad Teyeb, Twitter, May 20, 2020, https://twitter.com/mouradteyeb/status/1263007930665906178

[18] Frederic Bobin, “Death of Idriss Deby: southern Libya, troubling rear base for Chadian rebels” Le Monde, April 22, 2021, https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2021/04/20/mort-d-idriss-deby-le-sud-libyen-troublante-base-arriere-des-rebelles-tchadiens_6077460_3212.html

[19] Anchal Vohra, “It’s Syrian vs. Syrian in Libya”, FP, May 5, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/05/libya-civil-conflict-syrian-mercenaries-turkey-russia-gna-haftar/

[20] Planeta, “Project: Chef and Cook Investigation into how Russia is involved in the civil war in Libya”, Planeta, 09/12/2019/News, https://planeta.press/news/42768-proekt-shef-i-povar/

[21] Jared Malsin and Thomas Grove, “Researcher or Spy? Maxim Shugaley Saga Points to How Russia Now Builds Influence Abroad”, Wall Street Journal, Oct.5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/researcher-or-spy-maxim-shugaley-saga-points-to-how-russia-now-builds-influence-abroad-11633448407

[22] Shelby Grossman, Daniel Bush, Renee DiResta, “Evidence of Russa-Linked Influence Operations i Africa”, Stanford University, Internet Observatory, White Paper, published 29 October, 2019, https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/publication/evidence-russia-linked-influence-operations-africa

[23] Michael Weiss and Pierre Vaux, “Russia’s Wagner Mercenaries Have Moved into Libya. Good Luck With That”, Daily Beast, Sep. 28, 2019, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-wagner-mercenaries-have-moved-into-libya-good-luck-with-that

[24]   Hans Von Der Burchard, “EU slaps sanctions on Russian Mercenary Group Wagner”, Politico, December 13, 2021, https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-hit-mercenary-group-wagner-sanctions/

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