 I am pleased to welcome you to the IA's webinar today. My name is Derek Fitzgerald and I'm a member of the Institute. We're delighted to be joined today by Professor Candice Rondo, who has been very generous in taking time out of her busy schedule to speak to us today. Candice Rondo will speak for 20 minutes or so. After that, we will have a Q&A session. You would be able to join the Q&A session by using the function on Zoom. You should see that button on your screen. And please feel free to add the questions as they occur to you during the presentation, and we will come to them at the end of the presentation. A reminder that today's presentation is and the Q&A session are both on the record. And please feel free to join us on Twitter using the handle at IIA. So what is the Wagner Group and what do we know of it? The Wagner Group ostensibly is a private military company which has been financed by one of the Russian oligarchs. And it has become one of the most discussed features of Russia's expanding global ambitions. From Ukraine to Mali, the Wagner fighters have backstopped Russian military, guarded critical infrastructure, and served as emissaries of the Russian state to war-torn and embattled governments around the world. Yet much of the standard narrative surrounding the Wagner Group is wrong and deliberately so. Drawing on years of research and reporting, as well as analysis of a large scale of social media. Professor Rondo will trace the origins of the Wagner Group, how the Wagner smoke screen has emerged, and how it is operating today. If I could now I'd like to say a few words on Professor Rondo by way of introduction and then handover to you. Candice Rondo directs Future Frontlines, a public intelligence service for next-generation security and democratic resilience. A journalist and public policy analyst, she is Professor of Practice and Fellow at the Millikian Center for Russian Eurasian and East European Studies, and the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University. Before joining New America, Professor Rondo served as Senior Program Officer at the UN Institute of Peace, where she launched the Resolve Network, a global research consortium on conflict and violent extremism, and served as a strategic advisor to the UN Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. She has documented and analyzed political violence around the world for the Washington Post and the International Crisis Group. Before going to the joining the post in 2009, Professor Rondo covered criminal justice in Maryland and Virginia, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning team with other post contractors on the 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre. So with that, I'd like to hand over to you, Professor Rondo. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dary. Thank you for the very kind introduction and thank you for the invitation to speak here today. It's, it's really a rare treat to be able to talk to folks at such length about the Wagner Group, which is a topic that has been a point of obsession for me for the last five years. So I'm very, very grateful to you and to your colleagues at the IAEA and to the audience for joining us today. So, you know, a couple of months ago, in early September, I traveled to Ukraine to see what I could find out about how Russian mercenary operations were playing out there. And I mostly stuck close to Kiev in that area and comparatively speaking things were much calmer than they are now. But while I was there, I met with the Mayor of Bucha and you all will know Bucha, of course, because of its unfortunate fame for a number of large scale war crimes that occurred early on in the war there. And the Mayor of Bucha recounted in grizzly detail how Russian soldiers of fortune with the Wagner Group went from house to house searching for members of Ukrainian Armed Forces and government agencies who lived in this upscale suburb near Kiev. And Bucha was one of several stops on my trip, actually, and I was quite curious to find out that actually war crimes in the Kiev area committed by the Wagner Group were quite prevalent and much more pronounced than I think many people understand. So after my visit to Bucha the next day I traveled to a neighboring town called Mochijin about 45 minutes away to the west of Kiev, where I heard similar stories. Eyewitnesses there told me how well armed Russian mercenaries had spent nearly a month terrorizing everyone, while they mounted drone operations aimed at targeting Kiev during the initial phases of the war. The reports of the ordeal also recounted how shortly before the town was liberated in late March, Wagner Group operatives, operatives had taken the town's mayor, her husband, and young 20 something son, a promising footballer to a house that the Russians had occupied, and then tortured them to death. After the town was liberated, the bodies of the mayor and her family were discovered in a mass grave at the edge of town. It was a fascinating story, but it was one that was eerily similar to events that were happening halfway around the world in Africa, almost precisely at the same time, in a remote part of Mali. That same month in early March, when the mayor had been killed in Ukraine. Armed forces loyal to the government of Mali and Russian mercenaries summarily executed an estimated 300 civilian men in the rural town of Mora. In fact, mercenaries with Wagner Group on security situation Mali has since of course been a flashpoint in a churning debate between the UN Security Council about increased reports of human rights violations in the country, and the effect of the Russian presence on the security situation there. In June, the situation became so acute that it sparked tensions between the five permanent members of the Security Council, and really very nearly derail the UN's largest effort to stabilize the Sahel region of Africa. And more recently, as you all probably know, the influx of Russian mercenary forces has not only resulted in the departure of French forces. It has led Paris to cut off development aid to Bamako after over fears that Russian paramilitaries will leverage the aid to expand the Kremlin's destabilizing influence in both Mali and the Sahel region, large. So those fears are actually pretty well founded Russian soldiers of fortune have emerged as serious threats to the protection of civilians and peace and stability in many countries around the world, as we can see from these stories. The connection to war crimes and human rights violations is actually not coincidental, nor is it new everywhere they go Russian soldiers of fortune are trailed by allegations of horrific horrific atrocities from Ukraine to Mali and beyond. Russian fighters operating under the banner of Wagner Group have been implicated in dozens of war crimes in Sudan, for instance, despite denials from the backing from the Sudanese government. The evidence that Russian back mercenaries are involved in illicit profiteering from gold mining in the Central African Republic, the UN has reported concerns about Russian involvement in the systematic use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war. The number of alleged Wagner Group human rights violations in Libya meanwhile is so high that it's easy to lose count. There's actually no accident that when Wagner Group is involved in military action, a profusion of confusing narrative seems to crop up about who they are, what they are, who they work for and why. That's because the reality is that the Wagner Group is one part instrument of psychological warfare, one part deception operation, and one part deniable proxy force for sketchy missions the Kremlin wants to keep quiet. And speaking their covert operations real and imagined are critical for Russia's strategy for sanctions evasion and for managing the risks of conflict escalation in places where Russian forces and entities are engaged in clear violations of international law and other competitors like the United States and NATO partners are present. Practically speaking, Russian mercenaries run reconnaissance operations. They provide targeting intelligence military training, logistical support infrastructure protection, all the things that you would expect for a private security company. Their area operations, their area of operations actually encompasses the world as we just discussed. Another thing to understand is, they work where Kremlin controlled state companies also work in the area of fossil fuel mining fossil fuel extraction, mining, and the distribution of arms and training and equipping of local forces. Some of us, and you have sanctioned the Wagner Group and individuals suspected of being involved in the Russian mercenary operations, but it's not really clear what effect those moves have had on constraining Russia's deployments of mercenary contingents. More recently, in Washington, there's been a lot of discussion about whether or not it's time for Washington to designate the Wagner Group, a foreign terrorist organization. But that's a pretty controversial move and not surprisingly, it's not unattractive to those in Kiev, who are also experiencing a great deal of terror from Wagner Group operatives in Ukraine. And such a move, of course, would be helpful in so much as it would prohibit the provision of material support to Russian mercenaries going forward. And in theory, it would give intelligence and law enforcement agencies, wider latitude to scrutinize the activities of individuals and firms linked to Russian contract operatives. Given the lack of substantive and effective policy action so far, sounds like a pretty good deal. There's only one real problem. The Wagner Group does not exist. Or at least it doesn't really exist in the same way. Most people think it does. It's not a company in the classic sense. It doesn't operate like it's Western counterparts, like Blackwater. That comparison is actually not a fair one. So this begs the question, what is the Wagner Group and what do we really know about it. In the morning this may require a little bit of myth busting and by necessity involves a stroll through history and I'll try and make it as brief as possible. So let's start with myth number one. The Wagner Group is the first private military security company in Russia. Not quite. The private security industry in Russia actually well predates Wagner Group by at least 30 years and well predates the involvement of Yevgeny Progosian, the man we all know as Putin's chef, who has been, who has claimed to be the main financier and founder of the Wagner Group. To understand the origin story of the private market for force in Russia, we have to go back to the Cold War era. And the world was more or less divided between two poles in the United States and the Soviet Union. The competition and the basic geographical factors that drew these firm lines between those two poles between the US and the Soviet Union. Also drew transit and trade relationship lines around the world, including for the distribution of energy and arms. And that were partners of either the Soviet or American energy trade or military technical agreements. Essentially they bought into architectures that have implications for the ways in which the military is on the ground, and the use of force in places like Africa and the Middle East and Asia is deployed. And that's still very much the case today the legacy of that arrangement, the division between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Alliances are are actually still extant in large parts of Africa in parts of the Middle East, and that cleavage is very much what sort of services or provides the pathway for Wagner Group operatives to do what they do today. It's important to remember that another factor in the growth of Russia's private military security industry was simply the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, and the downsizing of the military. At the time in 1991, roughly 3 million, about 2.6 million troops were under Soviet control. They were downsized progressively over the years to about 1 million. And as you know now from watching this mobilization in Ukraine, there has been some difficulty with mobilizing large scale forces on that scale since then. So that means a lot of men of fighting age males were out of work and needed a place to earn a living. And very quickly, after Putin took power in 2000, the consolidation of state run industries like shipping oil, gas, you know, energy production extraction, as well as arms production and distribution. So I would go for some of those men, military age men to join up as private security providers in small scale detachments initially. That did change over time. And that's where we come into myth number two. You might have heard a lot about this idea that Russia actually prohibits the formation of mercenary companies or private military companies. Myth number two is it's against the law for private military companies to operate outside of Russia. This too is a little bit misleading. It's true that article 359 of the Russian criminal code prohibits Russian citizens from fighting for profit in a foreign army. And there are several laws on the books that actually grant special status for certain types of armies or military forces. But the reality is, in 2007 and 2008, the biggest shift that allowed for the deployment of large scale quasi private forces under the Russian under Russian law was a state decree that gave gas from Russia's largest gas production to one of the largest in the world, and Ross tech, which is the sort of mothership arms producer for Russia and the state arms agency were given permission to hire their own private armies. And so the gene genealogy actually of the wider group stems from this particular moment in time when the law shifted and allowed a lot of large scale state run companies to begin hiring their own armies. And gas problem had in the from 2007 or so about 30,000 armed men under its control. And that's pretty large, large scale army, actually, and Ross tech I don't know what the numbers are but they're certainly well in the tens of thousands. So, Putin really also has used that law and leveraged it going forward to expand the remit of private security providers that deliver things that are called designated as strategic goods strategic goods include oil and gas. And that's part because oil and gas are a big part of Russia's government revenue streams without oil and gas it would be very difficult for Russia to operate a day to day basis and its sovereign wealth fund, of course, is completely funded, almost entirely funded by oil and gas revenues. You know, of a strategic commodity of course our arms. That is what one of the other main exports that has, you know, great value add for Russia is increasingly very important for its positioning in the world. One of those goods is another decree that allows for private military contingents to operate in more offensive frameworks when delivering goods to particularly a combat zone like Syria, or Libya as we have seen over the last five years. Let's talk about myth number three. I think the most important one because I think it's the one that's in the news the most these days. Let's talk about you have any progression myth number three is you have any progression is the mastermind behind the Wagner group. If you have been paying attention at all to the news you will have seen videos of you have any progression sort of tall balding man, marching around a prison, giving speeches and trying to recruit prisoners. You'll note that he has been very critical and very vocally critical recently of the war effort, and has called for more aggressive moves to mobilize horses in Ukraine. And his profile, progressively, especially after he admitted both being the founder of the Wagner group but also interfering in US elections in 2016 and 2018 and 2020. After those admissions. Of course he's received a lot of notice and attention, and there's good reason for that. He certainly is somebody who is important to the Wagner group cause or effort or mission. And he deserves credit for his very adept manipulation of military defense procurement bidding processes, as well as his very clever use of shell companies to skirt sanctions and embargoes and to insulate the activities of contract soldiers from too much public scrutiny. He's done very well at that actually, but the sale and transfer of large scale weapons of large scale scale weapons platforms like the kind we saw in Libya, where you had large scale pansier anti aircraft missile batteries that were surreptitiously shipped via the UAE to anti government rebel forces would have been impossible without the additional and direct knowledge and help of the Ministry of Defense in Russia, and without the knowledge and decision making of those in the Kremlin. And to say that you have any progression operates entirely on his own is a little bit misleading, and certainly does not reflect the full scale and scope of the networks that support Wagner group operations. What this really tells us is that the Wagner group is better described really as a paramilitary cartel. In Mexico's Sena Loa drug cartel or even OPEC Wagner group detachments first and foremost are the enforcers of price fixing arrangements between Russian state energy and arms companies and host governments like those in in Mali or in Sudan, or CR. Their presence as we've seen eliminates competition from the West, right, France is no longer present in Mali. So their success there. His progression himself is more kind of like a. Well he's kind of like a COO meets chief branding and marketing officer. His real expertise and success lies in it lies as much in selling the idea that the Wagner group operates entirely independently of the Kremlin, as it is a unitary company. In fact, the military operatives who are training and equipping and fighting alongside local forces in Mali and Ukraine, a part of a network of military contingents and detachments that are contracted through intermediary front companies that provide services to Russian ministry of defense via its primary procurement arm, the joint stock company Garnizon. Garnizon is a holding company that is directly subordinate to Ministry of Defense, and its subsidiaries are variously responsible for everything from repairing military planes, tanks and supplying troops with MREs and bedsheets. So what we're really talking about when we refer to the Wagner group is really the brokerage firms that organize the shipping, the charter companies for flights, not customs and warehouse traders, wet lease air transport forms, and travel and accounting agencies that pay contract soldiers salaries, where pregosin and other front men come in is they manage these quasi governmental and covert operations and arrangements shielding the Kremlin's activities from international scrutiny at a time when it could not be in a more precarious position to understand how this arrangement works it's really important to understand the origin story of what we now know today as the Wagner group and I'm going to come close now to the end of my, because I want to make sure we have time for q amp a, but the genealogy of the Wagner group and affiliated Russian military contractor contingents can be traced directly to the networks of strategic enterprises that were serviced primarily by former KGB agents, now known as FSB, and to a lesser degree former GRU agents who were eventually, you know, out of work through this downsizing I mentioned earlier, and found themselves in a position to kind of leverage their knowledge of military services and military operations to provide services to state run companies. The important of these in the genealogy and kind of family tree of the Wagner group is the Moran security group, which is one of the early progenitors that actually hired. The commander of the Wagner group that we all know now today very famously, first to work in Syria, under the attack, a detachment known as the Sylvanic Corps. As the Arab spring rock the Middle East region, Moran security presence and that of other Russian security firms, like RSB group became much more pronounced. So that instability drew these essentially state designated military security contractors into the into the war zones that were erupting as the Arab spring unfolded. So enterprises like Gazprom, Luke, Luke oil, TATNF, straight trans gas, all of these energy firms had huge stakes in places like Libya and Syria. And they also had under their employee contingents of military intelligence who retired active reserve special operators or Spetsnaz officers who do basically overtime or rotate back and forth into active duty service and reserve service, depending on when their contracts are are actually in in operation. So that's the kind of general kind of logistical arrangement of the Wagner group, but it's important also to remember one other thing. Schema. It also carries with it the idea that the Wagner group is one company. And the reason we believe that largely is because progression has also been very good at manipulating large scale. Social media campaigns online on Facebook on Twitter on the contact you in local in the local press with standing up online websites that are news sites. You can see the examples of this in the CR examples of this in Molly, and that is another key component of the service that progression provides in terms of creating a unitary brand for the Wagner group. And psychologically, this is very important for a number of reasons one, it allows Russia to project power outward and to give the impression that it can be everywhere and anywhere at all times. And when in actual fact, as we've seen in in the Ukraine mobilization, there are a lot of limitations to Russia's ability to mobilize military force at scale. The other of course important part is the reputation that they have now gathered as kind of extremely aggressive operatives also gives Russia the ability to create more influence with local leaders, like in places like Molly. Where we've seen that the junta there is quite impressed with the kind of psychological value of being able to terrorize the local population into submission. So what's to be done. This is sounds like pretty bad situation. And of course there are growing concerns about the reach of the Wagner group, the impunity that seems to trail them. I think the first step is to really treat the problem for what it is. This is a Russian state backed organized crime cartel that often operates like a paramilitary group. The second step is to work diligently to trace the wagon groups activities and interests. And with concerted effort, you can really understand and know the shell companies that make up this covert network, and they can be traced through bills of lading customs, trade data, and other open sources that are publicly available to anyone who cares to explore them. And the last step is perhaps the most daunting but the most necessary. Maybe time for the world and interested parties to really consider undertaking a multi jurisdictional approach to the prosecution of Wagner group affiliated entities that individuals for crimes against humanity. Such an effort would without doubt be daunting and would involve a considerable amount of time and resources, but doing nothing is likely a far more costly alternative. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Rondo. That was really fascinating stuff. And if, if I could just follow your last point with the question. I mean, the United Nations have made a number of attempts to get a collective view on how to control such mercenaries. What is the present position on that has any resolution been passed. Any steps been taken in that area. Yes, so this is a very sticky issue for all the reasons you can imagine. Unfortunately, the United Nations, you know, has a DNA problem. The five permanent members included of course Russia, and China of course has allied itself very closely with Russia's population. And so we've seen, you know, a good example of this is the repeated attempts to bring Russian mercenaries to heal or to contain, or to make them accountable for their actions and Molly we've seen a number of resolutions forwarded there, pertaining to the concerns about the Wagner group in particular, and China and Russia have blocked those resolutions repeatedly. So there is of course the UN expert working group on mercenary activity, which has been very closely monitoring, and I think quite aggressively monitoring the activities of the Wagner group in lots of different locations around the world. The challenge of course is that the UN is probably not the right venue to pursue accountability simply because of this DNA problem with the Security Council. So the question becomes, at what stage do we understand the Wagner groups activities, and particularly their violations of the international law to rise to the level where they might be, they might be treated differently. In terms of how we think of them in international justice terms. A good example here is, maybe a comparison would be the triple I am, which was formed right after. I guess 2016 2017, when the UN found, again, it itself had an impasse in terms of bringing justice to ISIS operatives in Syria and Iraq. But essentially formed a special investigative body that oversaw and still continues to look into crimes committed by by ISIS operatives. It is not a perfect solution, because it doesn't necessarily point to reparations for victims, but it is one option. I think there are probably other options, particularly because the Ukraine conflict has some special barriers that lend itself to the possibility of seeking out a prosecution of crimes of aggression. And without doubt, because, because there was so much pre planning involving Wagner group operatives and pre deployment, even before hostilities began of Wagner group operatives inside Ukraine, that would make for a very good case a very good opportunity to pursue, maybe a unique means of ensuring that there was accountability for war crimes. Thank you. Again, I'm going to follow on your answer and in relation to difficulty for the United Nations. I mean, people are aware that private military companies, there are a large number of paramilitary companies, or private military companies operating throughout the world. Could you draw a clear distinction between how the Wagner group operates and how the other private military companies may operate. I mean, obviously, the private military security industry is a multi billion dollar, you know, multi multi jurisdictional industry, right so we have, you know, operatives, we have large scale companies that operate outside of the unit in the US in Australia and UK, very famously South Africa. So the problem early in their, early in their genesis had very similar problems actually with accusations around human rights abuses and misuse of force and you'll remember of course, executive outcomes is probably like the most famous example of this, where there was a lot of abuses in South Africa on their watch. But the maturation of those industries, the public scrutiny of those activities did lead to a couple of big moves. Obviously, of course, the black water incidents involving the shootings in this or square in Iraq in 2007 led to the adoption of the international code of conduct on military force on the association of private security forces, otherwise known as I coca. At a core the mantra document lays out kind of the standards by which private military security operators should be held to account, and how they should also operate, usually within the bounds of international humanitarian law. And in fact, interestingly, the Moran security group and RSB group actually early on assigned on to those accords, but seem to have since fallen, fallen to follow them. So I guess the substantive difference between these Russian contingents and, let's say, American or Australian or Western style outfits is Western outfits are genuinely registered firms that are genuinely private. That's the first distinction. They're headed by their own corporations, they're headed by their own CEO or director, etc. And as such, they assume liability under the color of the laws in which the jurisdictions in which they operate. Openly. And they, you know, and that's part of their corporate DNA. The wagger group, right, it actually is a number of different contingents that are actually genuinely registered as corporate entities in Russia. Some, you know, are actually private security providers that legally operate in a gray zone in so much as they originally had a domestic remit but then they expanded their international remit once they began signing on with state run companies. And because their primary operative jurisdictional relationship is dictated by Russian law. And their primary contractual relationship is with state entities. That is the fundamental difference. And they are, they are not really their own masters in many ways, because of the strange state capitalism arrangements. And because of the laws that I alluded to earlier, that give them kind of a special status almost a quasi governmental status when they're operating in combat zones and delivering strategic commodities. I'm going to go to a question from shem's Martin, he's the former international editor of Irish Times. What does Professor Rondo know about another Mexican mercenary group called readout, which is reported to be involved in the conflict in Ukraine, some sources suggest that this is linked to the GRU, especially further to the international intelligence. So, anti terror Reddit is one of the on the on the genealogy tree of what we know is the Wagner group. So again I would just point out that you know there are three or four different companies there's brand security group, RSB group, anti terror Reddit, anti terror or roll. And a couple of other small smaller ones, all of these kind of operate, almost in a confederation. And in some ways, that's the best way to think about their relationship to the Wagner group. Essentially, it is a confederation almost, and consisting of these detachments, but primarily backed by their relationship with another organization that you may have heard of called Liga, which is the league of veterans of foreign and domestic wars, local wars, which is based in St. Petersburg, and it is a legal entity is a veterans organization that is responsible for, you know, providing social services support to former military soldiers, and soldiers. But it has been the primary engine for recruitment. It has been the primary engine for organizing this confederation, and one of its chief commanders Andre Troche is very close to Progosian in fact now more openly you can see them kind of, you know, tagging each other in the community about the Wagner group. So anti terror Reddit sort of lineage comes from what we now know today is the FSB alpha group, which is an anti terror unit that was started actually out of the Afghan war that has since kind of grown and its influence and power, and it is considered kind of like the, I guess the a team of counter terror operations on the FSB side. Our next question is coming from more Biden company director for Central African Republic at concern concern is a large aid agency here in Ireland. It's a question really in relation to the safety of personnel. Does Candice have policy or operational recommendations for humanitarian actors who operate in the area where Wagner would have a presence. This is becoming a really interesting question and this has come up actually much more often now because I think, you know, the Wagner group's presence particularly in Central African Republic has been so long running and so well established now and its footprint is pretty substantial there. The last question I had the other day with a group of colleagues about the same topic is sort of how to deal with their presence. The challenge is of course you want to get aid to where it's needed. And as you would if you were any other humanitarian organization you have to be neutral on some level, which means you have to talk to these actors. So the most important thing is just to be aware of the limitations, perhaps about the things that they will and will not allow as a result of their kind of overall mission set and their overall set of relationships, not only on the ground and I do think, you know, to some degree taking care to document behaviors that are out of bounds and sharing that information, confidentially with the right people can be helpful in terms of just keeping the spotlight on their activities. It's really important that, you know, if, if in the process that they're becoming more and more entrenched, and you still you have to deal with them, and you know in the delivery of aid. It's still important that they are scrutinized, and that they are held to account and so there's neutrality for the mission set of delivery of aid but then there's kind of over correction and neutrality. You're, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you're not sharing the right information with the right people if that makes sense. Yeah. I have a next question is from Mary Cross. Mary Cross is the chair of the IA security and events group. And, Mary asks, what is the scale of the wagon of groups activity in Ukraine relative to the Russian troop deployment. I think it is becoming extremely difficult to discern. I mean, I know that, you know, their presence in and around Bakhmut of course is pretty entrenched, all sort of all along that eastern corridor near archive in the northeast. They've managed to entrench themselves quite well. And that's largely because that's kind of their, their origin point. Before 2014, there was no right, why do you remember. There was no need for a Wagner group, because there were a bunch of other little detachments, some of them volunteer that were deployed to Dumbass to occupy parts of the hands and and the desk. So the first insertion point was Luhansk for a number of individuals who were tasked with executing commanders of pro separatist forces forces who are viewed as intransigent or kind of, you know, running wild. And that is actually the origin story of the Wagner group and so it's not surprising to find that their presence in Luhansk is still very strong. In fact it's kind of their, it's their main kind of fortress as it were. Certainly not in in the forward operations that they once were, when they when the invasion started. They are important logistics providers they're important for air defense. They're important for reconnaissance, but it is difficult to discern now with these prisoners who have now become part of the recruiting chain to truly discern exactly what it is. They're doing other than providing, you know, kind of forward support and essentially acting as cannon fodder in a situation where Russia has very low capacity to mobilize and keep forces in a cohesive manner. Thank you. My next question is from keen Fitzgerald. He's part of the research team here at the IEA. It is clear that Wagner has sustained staggering losses in Ukraine's high intensity conflict. Could we see the Wagner group being withdrawn from Ukraine in order to refocus their area of operations on more vulnerable regimes in the Middle East or Africa or Asia. And we're going back to the question of, they got a specialist skill set that could be more useful to the Russians elsewhere. Well, so it's really a matter of economics. Until relatively recently, again, I think the prisoners are an exception to the rule, and that we have to set them aside a little bit when we're thinking about the recruitment base and kind of the, the, the those who actually populate these positions within the Wagner group. So setting that aside, I will say, generally speaking, the vast majority of recruits in these private military security detachments that fly in the flag of the Wagner group whether they be, you know, reddit anti terror, or, you know, anti terror or the Moran security group, whatever the detachments, they all get paid much more money than the average Russian soldier. And so that's going to be a huge incentive for anybody who's out of work or who's a reservist, and even frankly, mobilized soldiers who, for whatever reasons, after their conscription duty, decide to continue on. They will probably be pretty attractive to them to be earning, you know, almost twice as much money as their peers in the conscript service. So, it's a little bit about economics, but it's also, of course, about the circumstances in Ukraine. And Russia's, you know, mobilization has, I think we can say failed. I mean, it has succeeded in putting more bodies on the field, but it has failed in, you know, an effective becoming an effective fighting force that can beat back the Ukrainians in at the scale I think that was originally imagined. So I think that's going to be really important to gluing together and patching up holes in that mobilization for a long time to come. I expect this war to continue for many years. Two to three would be the minimum I would expect before we reach a point where some sort of negotiation leads to a cessation, or at least a temporary cessation of hostilities. So this is just on a general question of recruitment for the Wagner group. I mean, from my own experience I know that any military type deployment or paramilitary type deployment will need a range of skills, be they in communication be they in weaponry be the intelligence. Their own recruiting processes must be very effective to be able to mix that range of skills. Well, so that's a very interesting question. And it's one that I think, you know, I've spent a lot of time studying but I could probably spend years more looking at the kind of the particular skill sets that tend to make up Wagner contingents or tend to be part of the, the menu of desired items on the list for recruiters for the Wagner group. So here are the things that we've noticed, we've noticed that quite a few have experience in the VEDA very airborne paratroop services and units. A number of them have special skills and anti aircraft maneuvers and operations. Quite a few have experience in electronic warfare. They also are the miners sappers. And so, quite a few also have, you know, some specialization and communications. So there, there, there clearly is a very niche set of skills that is desired desirable in terms of recruitment. And I think it is very much reflected in the patterns that we see of those, you could even look at the casualties, if you wanted to in a very granular way, which is what we've kind of done in a lot of our research is kind of work backwards from the number of so called Wagner group fighters who have been killed in Syria, Ukraine, etc. And then we've taken a look at what where they said they had served. So, you know, prior to their service or during their service with the Wagner group in terms of like Russian military service. And there's a pretty strong prevalence of, you know, special operators in those airborne forces not exclusive, but also motor rifle be great brigades so again sort of you know maneuver operations reconnaissance operations are also very important skills or experiences to have had for this group. I'm just touching on Syria you mentioned Syria there and I have a question here from Valerie Hughes, a friend of the Syrian community in Ireland. Could Professor Rondo discuss the role of the Wagner group in Syria today. Yes. Well, so the Wagner group now, as we understand it. They are there are primarily providing protection for the extractive industry. So, across Syria, a number of deals have been made with pre Gosian linked companies, most famously capital and Mercury are the two big companies that recently I think scored concessions deals in central Syria, if I'm not mistaken. For several million dollars and 10s of millions of dollars and maybe about 64, I remember right. And so part of that package is the provision of security. So they're there and installations they're guarding pipelines are guarding, even, you know, phosphate mines, etc. And they're doing VIP support. You know, in Tartu and in Damascus that is providing bodyguard and protective services there. So we that they are doing continuing to do training of local forces that's a little less clear, I think, again that bears scrutiny I think, you know, one of the difficulties now is that the proliferation of Wagner group contingents is so large. You know, it's, we see them now. There's talk of their presence potentially in Ivory Coast, as an example, you know, getting basal that it's actually becoming quite difficult to track with any certainty. It really does require a full scale, probably multiple teams in multiple countries to really understand exactly what's happening on the ground in places like Syria. I'm just going to go back to to a point that you made in your introductory remarks about, you know, they're posing a serious threat to the civilian population, wherever, whatever country that they're deployed in. And to some extent you were not that an hour by the success of sanctions been placed on these people. But what we're talking about our war crimes, and therefore the prosecution of the war crimes is where the challenge is going to be. So discuss that a little bit further as to what actions could possibly be taken by individual countries or by collective of countries to bring them to a point of before a court. So this is where it gets a little tricky. There's a lot of debates about the universal jurisdiction clauses in the Rome statutes for the International Criminal Court, and as to whether or not, you know, a crime against humanity or war crime that takes place in any jurisdiction, even if it is not a crime against humanity to the Rome statute could be pursued just on grounds of sort of, you know, protection of civilians and protection of the Geneva conventions and and humanitarian law defense. It is, it is a really hard problem. I will admit that right away to construct a case that would kind of unify all of these pieces in one place. I think there are a few options for a multi jurisdictional set of cases against Wagner group operatives. One may be this idea of pillage. One of the things that's really important to keep in mind is that almost universally in, in very few cases, Ukraine is I think probably the one exception. There is a great deal of black market dealing in gold and other types of minerals oil. That is taking place under the wagon groups watch and technically, and these are, you know, these things are happening in war zone so technically, that would constitute the crime of pillage. You know, exactly as you would imagine it kind of a medieval kind of running rampant and taking goods and looting essentially the resources of a given country. I think that that's a pretty strong unifying case across almost every single jurisdiction, with the possible exception of Ukraine although now increasingly maybe there's a case there too. I think that bears looking into Venezuela is a good example. You may have seen recently that a number of operatives connected to paramilitary groups were arrested, or at least charged I should say by the US government for oil and illicit trafficking out of Venezuela, and they were all connected of course to a group, a detachment known as rusech, which has also long affiliation with the Wagner group umbrella. So, while it might be a very difficult course. I think, I mean it could be years in the making to be honest with you. It's probably a good idea to get started now on developing a theory of the case, whether it's that or whether the better level or lever is a crime of aggression in the case of Ukraine, just as sort of as a means of explaining and exposing the different arrangements that the Kremlin has put together to allow for these operatives to conduct their missions abroad. Thank you. I have a question from from the director of research here at the IEA Barry Colfer. Is the Wagner group best understood as a business seeking to maximize the amount of money it can make, or is it best understood as a political actor with a defined and understandable mission. The purpose of the Wagner group is to kind of hold two ideas in place at the same time. Actually, it is a political actor. And it but it's not mutually exclusive also it is a military. It is a military actor that does advance the business interests of the Kremlin. I think that's the best way to think of it. There is a reason why there's an over focus on gold mining. At a time when Russia is crushed by us and international sanctions, and that's been going on for years now. Having gold reserves has been the saving grace for the central bank. I can guarantee that some of the gold that is being mined in places like CR and Molly and elsewhere is in some way or another, winding up, not just in the pockets of rich Russian oligarchs that's true. And not just in the pockets of, you know, corrupt government officials, but some of that funding flow and some of that gold reserve is being driven into the central bank of Russia. And I think that's the work ahead is trying to understand exactly how those transactions take place. So the best way to understand the women group is it is both a political entity in so much as it serves the political purpose of projecting power outwardly from Russia into the world. But it is also a business entity that basically operates like a cartel. Okay, thank you. I have two final questions I see that we're running out of time and the questions are still coming through. The question is from from hushed hushed, excuse me. And he's an II a member, and he's, he's asking a very delicate question is the wagon of group that are prisoners of war as such that may be taken prisoner. Are they considered competence, legal competence, or would they be dealt with differently under international law. It depends on the jurisdiction. In the case of Ukraine, because Russian nationals are essentially, you know, citizens of a party to the hostilities. They are not mercenaries. And therefore they must be treated as essentially soldiers and prisoners of war in the proper context. They do not get special treatment. In fact, they are just like any other Russian soldier. So, but in the case of Syria, where we don't have that situation I mean really the only place where we have, you know, Wagner group as prisoners of war is in Ukraine as far as I know anyway. In those contacts, you know, it's really about the kind of the state of the war itself. There was an interstate conflict between Russia and Ukraine, I think now that's clear, whereas for whatever reasons, the international community was not ready to accede to the idea that the 2014 annexation of Crimea was also an interstate war for whatever means, we are now in a different state of play. And therefore those who are in combat and captured in combat, they should be treated as prisoners of war under the standard Geneva convention. Okay, thank you. And the final question is on recruitment. And one of the numbers that the recruiting process is an international process for Wagner group, and that even special forces that would have been trained by the American forces in Afghanistan are being recruited as part of members of the Wagner group. How widespread is this international context of the Wagner group in terms of recruiting. Well, this is, you know, this is an interesting change, I think I guess the thing that kind of qualitatively makes the Wagner group different in this particular era. I'd say around the time of the start of the, the second Libyan offensive so around 2018 2019 with the push for Khalifa Haftar's forces on to Tripoli assisted by the Wagner group. The Russian recruiters who had been training militias in Syria, bringing Syrian fighters into Libya. This was the beginning of that trend. And, and some of those Syrian fighters also ended up fighting in Azerbaijan. And then we heard early on, if you might remember very very early at the start of the Ukraine war, this phase of the war. And then we heard rumors of Libyans and Syrians in some sort of mass grave, after a major confrontation in, in and around I think the Kharkiv area in Ukraine. So, the twist with the Afghan forces is not terribly surprising in some ways and in a way actually, depending on their age. The Afghan fighters may have even had prior experience with the Soviets. One of the strange things, or even more recent experience with Russian service providers for things like helicopter repairs and maintenance, which of course, for many years, the Russians were providing those services through a rather odd where MI 8 and MI 16 helicopters were provided to support Afghan forces so would not be at all surprising in a way it's kind of just kind of continuity of relationships. But it is of course, you know, a little bit frightening to think that every time some sort of US or Western contract, or presence falls away. Those, those fighters that have been trained could become part of the, of the wagon group. That's certainly concerning. Thank you Professor Rondo. I know from an Irish defense forces perspective mercenaries and private military companies as they're now called. The engagement was back in 1963 when we deployed to the Congo. There was a South African by the name of mad mad Mike or which he caused great difficulties. But again, the issue of accountability was very difficult to solve and very difficult to prosecute. Rondo, I'd like to thank you for a most enlightening discussion and for your time here today. I know that a lot of people will have gotten a great deal of knowledge on how this whole area works. Thank you. Thank you.