Episode Info
- Season10
- Episode4
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guests
Jelena Aparac
Jelena Aparac is a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council examining the Wagner Group's war crimes and destabilizing activities.
Philip Wasielewski
Philip Wasielewski is a former CIA paramilitary case officer analyzing Wagner's role on the battlefield in Ukraine and whether the organization should be designated as a terrorist organization.
Episode Summary
The Wagner Group is used extensively by the Russian government in conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and across the African continent. The private military company serves as a shadow military consisting of thousands of highly-trained and well-equipped mercenaries. From war crimes to trafficking in illicit goods, they have earned a reputation as one of the most significant sources of instability in countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The United Nations Human Rights Council's Jelena Aparac and former CIA paramilitary case officer Philip Wasielewski look at how and where the group does Vladimir Putin's dirty work. They examine the role Wagner forces are currently playing on the battlefield in Ukraine and whether the international community should designate them as an international terrorist organization. The panel is joined by the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, who adds insights into Russia's asymmetric warfare tactics and what else may be in store as the Kremlin looks for more ways to destabilize its neighbors and other vulnerable nations.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: I'm Julia McFarlane, cohost of the One Decision Podcast. We're coming up on a significant milestone. It's our one year anniversary of bringing you in-depth analysis of the critical decisions shaping our world. To celebrate the occasion, cohost and former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and myself, will answer questions submitted by you, the listeners. Spies are usually pretty tight lipped, so don't miss the chance to write in. Your question might even make it onto the podcast. For more information, head over to 1decisionpodcast.com. You're listening to One Decision. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. Earlier this year, Ukrainian forces claimed they had landed a direct hit on the regional headquarters of the Wagner Group in the east of the country. You may have heard of them before. The Wagner Group is a Russian private military company that is believed to have been organized back in 2014 by a Chechen war veteran close to Vladimir Putin. The shadowy gang of mercenaries were thought to be the little green men who popped up during the annexation of Crimea. Wearing innocuous fatigues with no identifying military insignia, the Ukrainians and the wider world watching were initially unable to identify these masked men who were doing Vladimir Putin's bidding in Crimea. In 2018, three Russian journalists were then murdered in the Central African Republic days after flying into the war torn country. Their editors say they were on assignment to investigate the mercenary group Wagner, why they were in the CAR, and what they were doing there. The mercs have also popped up in Syria, Libya, and other countries. Who exactly are they? Are they essentially Putin's private army? And how should the world respond? We sat down with an expert panel to find out more. Well, I am delighted to welcome with me an expert panel for us to talk about Wagner and about private military companies. We have with us today, Yelena Aparatch, a consultant and expert from the United Nations Human Rights Council working group on the use of mercenaries. And we have also Philip Vasilevsky, former CIA paramilitary case officer and veteran, now a Templeton fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. We have of course, my regular co host, Sir Richard Dearlove with us today. Welcome to all of our guests. Thank you so much for joining us today. Now, I wanna start off with, for our listeners, PMCs and PSCs, private military companies and private security companies. They've been in the headlines a lot recently because of the increasing prominence of the Wagner Group on the ground in Ukraine, but they have been around for a long time. They're essentially private contractors and they can include paramilitary contractors who will be deployed either instead of or alongside conventional armed forces in the field. And the difference between the two is that private companies are not subject to the same scrutiny and often the same rules that national armies are. They're a lot less accountable, but they're also a lot more flexible, they're cheaper, and often they're a lot more capable than regular militaries. Yelena, you've been working on mercenaries for quite a few years now. You've studied them and their use in active conflict zones around the world, you've also drafted legal complaints involved with mercenaries and alleged war crimes, not just with the UN, but also with Médecins Sans Frontières. Briefly give us an account of the work that you do, so that we can get a grasp first of all, how international bodies like the UN and other monitoring groups are tackling accountability of these murky organizations such as Wagner?
INTERVIEW
Aparatch: Yes, thank you, Julia. So we are part of the special procedures under the Human Rights Council, as you well said, with the UN Human Rights System. And we have the mandate to monitor the role and the activity of mercenaries, mercenary related actors, and private military and security company. We have also studied the role of foreign fighters to see how this phenomenon, which is rather recent, would fit within the mercenary definition. And we presented the report to the UN finding the differences and common elements between foreign fighters and mercenaries. But there are, for example, elements that are quite different, like ideology and common elements, which would be, for example, financial gain. But that's on a case by case basis.
Mcfarlane: Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you mention foreign fighters, because while we're gonna focus this discussion on Russia and its use of the Wagner Group, it should be said that other countries use PMCs. Turkey and Armenia are reportedly using Syrian mercenaries on the ground in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UAE has reportedly recruited Sudanese mercenaries in Yemen. Iran has recruited Afghans to fight in Syria. And so while you say it's a recent phenomenon, there's a lot of interesting questions constitutes the use of PMCs abroad. Let's first of all, into this group called Wagner. And it was started by a former GRU colonel and Spetsnaz commander called Dmitry Utkin. And he is reported to have founded Wagner and gave the group its name, which was his former call sign. And also, Richard Wagner was of course the composer admired by Adolf Hitler. The Wagner Group, they were first believed to have been deployed during the annexation of Crimea back in 2014. Its mercs are thought to be some of those little green men who were photographed in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. And the current financier or head of Wagner is believed to be a man called Yevgeny Prigozhin. Philip, talk to us about the founding of Wagner, why did they spring up in 2014, and tell us a bit more about your understanding of the man who now finances and runs the group.
Vasilevsky: The man you're talking about who finances and overall owns the group, although he continues to deny this, is Yevgeny Prigozhin, who's a close associate of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. Prigozhin continues to deny any association with Wagner, although just most recently European Union courts have overturned his appeal of recent EU sanctions against Wagner himself for their activities, saying that there is a clear link between him and the companies. Also, in 2017, the United States Department of Treasury sanctioned Wagner and Prigozhin and Utkin, and in its sanctions of Wagner, it called Wagner a proxy arm of Russian military intelligence. So there are clear ties between the group and the Russian state. As a matter of fact, the group, as we know, based on the construct, the Russian government could not exist without the support and without the aid of the Russian government, and it works for the Russian government both as a tool of statecraft, but also as a tool of private gain. As a tool of covert statecraft, it provides a very limited amount of deniability these days, maybe more in 2014, 2015, to intervene in actions where the Russian government wished to have some influence, say in Libya or later on in Mozambique. This would be, in some ways, kind of normal security assistance, and in Soviet days, Moscow had a quite close relationship with both countries. However, as we have seen recently over the past several years, the use of this group has continued to spread throughout Africa in Mali, the Central African Republic, Sudan. And what is interesting about all of these relationships is that these are countries with gold and diamond reserves, and recent reporting in the press lays out how Wagner is intricately, intimately, excuse me, involved in gold smuggling from these African countries into Russia, in avoidance of international sanctions. So here is the private part as well as the statecraft part that Wagner plays in Russian foreign policy, as well as the personal criminal organization that is around the Kremlin as well.
Mcfarlane: You've hit upon a bunch of talking points I want us to cover over the course of this discussion, but first of all, let's just talk a little bit more about the group itself. Who are the kinds of people who are Wagner recruits? I think it's clear that the use of private military contractors or soldiers for hire are very beneficial for the Kremlin. You've mentioned that there is some deniability, a lot less now that they have been increasingly reported on. But there are other advantages of using them as well. That they're cheaper tactical units that don't require quite as much training as soldiers. Many of them are veterans and come fully trained and they also don't require any of the state benefits I expect such as pensions that a traditional army does, they're essentially pay as you go freelancers. They can also be used to hide personnel losses from the Russian public. Their deaths are not counted in the official Ministry of Defense report of how many servicemen have died whilst serving on the field or how many have been injured. So, what kind of people make up the Wagner Group? What kinds of people are recruited to be mercenaries, Philip?
Vasilevsky: At the beginning, Wagner mainly recruited from, as you mentioned, veterans of the Russian army, especially those who had served in Chechnya in either of the two wars in Chechnya, or had serious police experience, especially in the OMON or other Spetsnaz groups of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. As time has gone on, military experience has been less necessary as much as just a willingness to deploy because of the need for numbers for the various missions that Wagner has been engaged in, starting with Syria and then moving on to a number of countries as we listed, in Africa. And you are absolutely correct that one of the elements that makes them attractive to Moscow is some degree of deniability, but what's most attractive to them is a total degree of expendability. They do not have to care at all about the losses of these soldiers even though they're promised insurance benefits. There have been open source reportings, for those who were killed in Deir ez-Zor in Syria, of their families never even receiving any benefits. So there's weapons called fire and forget. Well, Wagner is a fire and forget weapon, for Moscow and for the Kremlin, and this is one of its chief advantages for using these sorts of troops. So again, their background is mainly military or militarized police units, special operations, in the Rosgvardia, and this is where it takes the majority of its recruits in the past. Although we are also seeing from open source reporting that for Wagner units that are being raised to fight in Ukraine, even this is not totally necessary as they are trolling the jails of Russia, to try and find enough people to fill their ranks for the fight in Ukraine.
Mcfarlane: Hiring out of jails, trying to open their doors to people who do not necessarily have military experience, that suggests that they have encountered heavy losses in recent years. If we're speaking about the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Russian armed forces writ large, as we know, have sustained heavy losses and are trying through all sorts of means to recruit enough personnel to serve on the front lines.
Vasilevsky: As a matter of fact, Wagner has actually brought back a number of its mercenaries from these African countries to serve in Ukraine. Not totally, though. They have not evacuated their footholds from any African country that I'm aware of, from open source reporting. So they've still kept a presence there, but they've had to take those people who they have and send them to Ukraine. So this shows also the limits of just how many people Wagner can find to fill its ranks because there are not that many people who are willing to go overseas, at the salaries being offered, to fight in these wars, where quite frankly their chance of survival, of being wounded, medical care in the case of sustaining wounds is quite limited, and their chances of getting evacuated back to Russia are also quite limited. It's a high gain, but also a high risk business. Although I should note, again, talking about the Russian government connection with Wagner, those Wagner mercenaries who were wounded in the battle of Deir ez-Zor in Syria were evacuated back to Russia on Russian military aircraft and were treated in Russian military hospitals. A benefit I don't think is allotted to most tourists who get injured overseas.
Mcfarlane: Richard, Philip mentioned that recently, the Russians have struggled to recruit numbers to pad out the army given their heavy losses in Ukraine. The BBC this weekend reported that there was a renewed effort to recruit new trainees in the army. And they interviewed a mother of a new recruit who was complaining that her son signed up and was given very little training before being immediately dispatched to the front lines in Ukraine, where he died shortly after his deployment. Richard, Philip mentioned Deir ez-Zor and Syria, and that was this incident back in 2018 where Wagner operatives and US forces came face to face for the very first time on the ground. There was a several hour firefight between hundreds of Syrian government troops and Wagner operatives who were approaching and then attacking US and Syrian Kurdish-Arab forces next to a Conoco gas plant in Eastern Syria, in the Eastern province of Deir ez-Zor bordering Iraq. The US forces and the Kurdish YPG units were there to fight ISIS militants. Now, according to the New York Times, American military officials had called their Russian counterparts and urged them to stop the attack and when that failed, US warplanes essentially carpet bombed their positions leading to dozens of Russian deaths and a couple hundred Syrian government regime soldiers to be killed. And that incident caused a lot of anger among Wagner senior leadership and their forces. Wagner operatives were deployed in Eastern Syria, across Syria, to support the Syrian Arab regime. And part of what they were doing there was to seize and protect oil reserves and plants on behalf of the Assad government and in return, they were to receive a percentage of the installation's profits. Now, I want to ask you because I think it's important to note that PMCs such as Wagner, they are not just soldiers for hire, they also serve a variety of uses. They do logistics, they do other sorts of things. And they also receive payment in other ways other than their contracts with various governments, such as receiving a percentage of oil field profits. Talk to us about that incident in Syria where the US forces came head to head with the Wagner operatives. And what kind of an issue does it present Western governments? The fact that there are these mercenaries on the field who the US cannot communicate with the Russian government, at least in official channels over, such as they did to call off the attack when that failed?
Dearlove: Well, I think even in crises, there are channels which you can use to convey messages. It's a deniable, this organization is a deniable extension of the GRU, and it suits the Russians to have a degree of deniability. And, of course, we all know that the link with the GRU is probably a close one. But on the other hand, it's malleable. The whole concept is malleable. So the Russians can say one thing, they can say another thing. And I mean, I think the incident you quote in Syria is probably quite a severe miscalculation on the Russians' part. But what fascinates me about the Wagner Group is the extent to which they have been used with clear political purpose in a number of areas where the Russians don't want to be upfront about their involvement. But on the other hand, their involvement is geopolitically important to the Russian government. So the examples that you quote are Syria, Libya, where they've been fighting to support Haftar. And obviously, the Ukraine dimension adds a much more contemporary and crucially important note. But I think there's no question that what we're seeing is the Russian government at some point having sat down, or the GRU leadership having sat down and said, what we need is a military organization, which is not a Spetsnaz, isn't it something else? So what are we gonna create? And this is clearly what they've created. And it's serving a clear purpose. I was also fascinated by what Philip said about gold and access to gold. I'm sure Philip will recall the whole issue in Africa of blood diamonds. I mean, we've been around this circuit before in another fashion. Okay, the blood diamonds issue was not specifically exploited by the Russians, but it was exploited by other mercenary groups who were fighting on behalf of various corrupt African governments who were very keen to get these diamonds into the commercial market and gain personal profit. So this is a very murky and complex area. And I think, actually, at the moment, because of what's happening geopolitically, we need to take Wagner's interventions very, very seriously and regard them really as proxy GRU. For me, it's pretty straightforward issue. And I'm sure Philip and I probably, given our backgrounds, would recognize what we're talking about.
Mcfarlane: Yeah. I sort of don't really know the difference between proxy forces and PMCs, other than perhaps a difference in ideology. Yelena, both Richard and Philip talked about obscurity and deniability. And given that incident in Syria where US forces were coming under attack from a blend of Syrian regime forces and Russian forces, and they phoned up the Kremlin and they said, call off the attack. You're attacking US personnel. And the Kremlin said, don't know what you're talking about. How difficult is it, the fact that the Russian government, at least publicly, will say they have nothing to do with Wagner, even if we know that's not the case? And what does that mean for bodies like your UN working group? Who do you take your complaints to? Do you talk to the Russians about mercenaries and about Wagner? And what do they say to you when you try to engage with them on their use of mercenaries?
Aparatch: Yes, well, you're absolutely right. The issue of transparency is a very big concern of us. And the other concern is actually the legal status of this entity. For example, a lot of journalists or a lot of media would refer to Wagner as PMC, as a private military and security company, which we believe is not yet. We believe it's an entity that does not really have any legal existence. And therefore, to come back to what Philip and Richard have been saying, they do need legal entities like other corporations, whether registered locally or in Russia, to conduct their financial transactions and other financial economic activities that has to be legally conducted. When we look into the situation, and again, we don't look just Wagner, we look also mercenaries and we look also private military and security companies. But in the context of Wagner, we started to look of different contexts since May 2018 when we had this first case of a journalist who was a Russian journalist who was investigating the role of Wagner in Syria, and then he accidentally fell off the balcony, we addressed the allegation letter to the Russian Federation. So under our mandate, we can address what we call allegation letters, which is a term for communication system under the UN special procedures, which means that we can send the allegations that were received to states and to the non-state actors, which is very important given that the international legal frameworks is set to only address the states. So we can address non-state actors. We have identified sufficient links between Wagner and the Russian Federation, and we have consistently been in different contexts, such as Libya, such as Central African Republic, such as the Russian case recently in December 2021, again, with the Russian case in relation to the Wagner in Syria. We do address our allegation letters to the Russian Federation asking them clarification about the role of Wagner, their legal statute, their connection with the state. So our allegation letters are what the name says, it's the allegation letters. We are not a tribunal, we do not decide. We simply engage in dialogue with the state.
Mcfarlane: And do they engage in a dialogue? What do they say to you when you present them with those complaints?
Aparatch: So the Russian responses are very clear. There is prohibition under Russian criminal code of use of mercenaries, of private military and security companies. We have verified this is exact, this is true. And they deny consistently the existence of the Wagner Group. However, the fact that the Wagner does have link with legal entities, it allows us to engage in dialogue with those legal entities if and when we find the contact of those entities. So, for example, in the context of Central African Republic in March 2021, we have sent allegation letter to the government of the Central African Republic because it was on the territory of that country that it happened. So the information that we have received that there was a local company called Lobaye Invest, that is a company registered under Central African law and that has the concessions on the gold and diamond to upgrade in Central African Republic, the Sewa Security Company, which provides private security in Central African Republic, and the Wagner Group does not have legal existence, and so was going through those entities. In Syria, we have identified another company that was also linked to Wagner. So it becomes now a sort of a pattern that the Wagner does need legal companies to conduct their operations for some elements of their operations, financial transactions, administration or whatever. So but at the same time, they do not exist, which gives them the space to operate.
Mcfarlane: Right. Philip, Yelena mentioned that running a mercenary army is actually against the Russian constitution, but they use various loopholes to bypass those laws. And the idea that they don't exist on paper, that they have no registration, at least not any that's publicly known. We recently interviewed Bill Browder, and he mentioned that some of his earlier work in tracking down Russian criminals was actually quite easy because the Russians are notoriously bureaucratic, he said. He said, they write down absolutely, they make notes of all of their transactions, even ones that they probably shouldn't have. So how does that work? How do you run a company that has tens of thousands of employees like Wagner? And if you're a bureaucratic Russian organization, how does it work that it's not registered anywhere or that it is not legally in existence? That's not possible, surely. I mean, can you run a company that big, with no documentation?
Vasilevsky: Well, they obviously do, and they lie. We should not come as a surprise to anyone on this podcast or anyone watching it. And you are right, they are very bureaucratic, almost like the Nazis were, in their crimes of noting everything down, which does not work well for them in many respects. If you are going to be running a covert operation, you are going to want to not only have some sort of deniability, but also be kind of good at it. And as we've seen now with Wagner directly participating in land combat in Ukraine, there should be once and for all no doubt whatsoever that Wagner is part and parcel and arm of the Russian government in some way. However, this can work to our advantage, the fact that, and yes, the Russian constitution prohibits private military companies or mercenaries of any kind, and it continues. Foreign minister Lavrov just a few weeks ago, again, denied any connection between the Russian government and Wagner. This is why a colleague of mine from the National Security Council, Jim Petrila, and I recently published in Lawfare an article calling for the US Secretary of State to designate Wagner as a foreign terrorist organization under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that's in place in the United States. This is the same designation as ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups have been designated under. Now I mentioned earlier that Wagner had been designated by the Department of Treasury for its illegal activities under a separate statute. But if the secretary of state was to find that Wagner is a foreign terrorist organization, and the requirements are rather simple, it has to be a, a foreign entity, b, engage in terrorist activity, and c, the terrorist activity has to threaten the security of the United States or its nationals. Then this allows legally the United States to use two tools that would be very effective in containing Wagner. And one is material support criminal sanctions for anyone knowingly providing support to Wagner and allowing US citizens to sue both Wagner and any person or entity who provides substantial support to Wagner for civil remedies if they're victims of Wagner terrorist activities. Now what does this mean in reality? Bellingcat and other organizations, which do a great job in finding the names, passport numbers, and other information of people involved in the mercenary activities of the Russians in Syria and Africa and that. This information could then be given to airlines to forbid their travel for travel of Wagner mercenaries. It could also bring legal action against them in international courts. Remember, this is a large organization, logistics is key, you have to ship these weapons overseas, you've got to ship supplies, support. Any shipping company, airline company, private company that would provide material support to the Wagner company, if it was designated as a foreign terrorist organization, could then be liable to US criminal sanctions. And this would, we believe, would put a crimp into their activities and would be extremely discouraging from any company providing them support as well as other countries wishing to hire them.
Mcfarlane: I think it's very interesting, you pointing out that recent announcement of the proscription of the group. And one very obvious sort of question that that begs is, why has the Interpol red notice been rescinded for Yevgeny Prigozhin who is reportedly able to travel quite freely throughout the world, and maybe this proscription of the organization may change things. But before we turn to Africa, I just want to turn to Ukraine and what Wagner are doing there. And it is interesting because Ukraine is allegedly where Wagner was first deployed at the start of their inception. Because there are a few interesting things that happened recently. The Ukrainian artillery is said to have struck the regional headquarters of the Wagner Group in a town called Popasna, which is in Luhansk in Russian occupied Eastern Ukraine, and that was just over a week ago. And also three Wagner mercenaries are alleged by Ukrainian prosecutors to have committed war crimes, including murder and torture in a village near Kyiv in April. That was when Russian forces were withdrawing from Kyiv earlier in the spring. And German intelligence also suspects that Wagner operatives were involved in the killing of civilians in Bucha during that same withdrawal. Now, Richard, what did you make of those reports earlier in the war that apparently Wagner operatives were sent to Kyiv to carry out an assassination against Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Do you think they ever got close?
Dearlove: Well, I think that probably the Ukrainians played the Russians at their own game. I mean, in terms of what I understand is Ukrainian intelligence service were quite clever in, as it were, suckering the Russians into believing that they could buy their way into Kyiv and that they could buy local governments and that the people who were supposedly sympathizers to the Russian position would be massively rewarded after the event. And I think the Russians thought they were gonna drive down the road, that they had bought the local administration, that the administration officials were gonna get given tens of thousands of dollars for helping the Russians. The Russians would roll over the Ukrainian government and that part of that would be sending in a group like Wagner to go in and assassinate the ministers of the being deposed government and replace them very quickly. Of course it just didn't happen like that because the Ukrainians were cleverer, they put up fierce resistance, everything went badly wrong. It was catastrophic.
WAGNER IN AFRICA
Mcfarlane: Philip, I just want to turn to Africa because Wagner reportedly have around 5,000 operatives deployed on the African Continent which is almost, I'm told, almost as much as the US deployment of around 6,000 troops and support personnel on the African Continent as well. Wagner are in Mali, they're in the Central African Republic, and they're in Sudan as you've mentioned. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia's new reliance on Wagner stems in part from the fact that elite Russian units that would otherwise carry out such missions have been battered near Kyiv because of Moscow's miscalculations in the earlier weeks of the war, as Richard was saying. And a former deputy chief of Ukraine's SBU told the Wall Street Journal that the Russian Federation has a huge problem with motivated units. The only motivation that remains is money. They have nobody left for storming and breakthroughs, and Wagner is their only combat unit that does it without asking any questions, even if it takes losses of 10 to 15% after every mission. Now, on their use in Africa, they have been contracted by the Malian government after they kicked out French forces earlier this year. Mali is the fourth biggest gold exporter in the world, and they also have manganese and oil, uranium and lithium, all kinds of important things. Sudan is also hugely resource rich. And there was that peaceful democratic transition after they ousted Bashir several years ago, who was a long time dictator in Sudan. And during his thirty year tenure, he worked with the Russians, allegedly suppressing a lot of the protests that eventually deposed him. Now, Sudan, as I mentioned, has a lot of lucrative sectors such as oil, natural gas, agriculture, and gold. Talk to us a bit about why Wagner is in Africa and how exactly it works. How does a private military company take advantage of resources in Africa in exchange for carrying out contracts there?
Vasilevsky: Wagner's in it for the money, which means Moscow's in it for the money. As I mentioned earlier, yes, there are some statecraft goals going back to Soviet times where there was relations between Moscow and Libya, Moscow and Mozambique, which are continued. If this was simply a matter of uniformed officers going to a foreign country to provide their expertise, military expertise and training. This is security assistance. This is done by countries throughout the world, certainly most major countries, and there's nothing really wrong or unusual about this. Where we get into what we're all here about talking about Wagner is two things. One is the consistent violations of the law of armed conflict conducted by Wagner to the extent, especially by their murders of civilians and other protected persons that it really rises to, what we've suggested, to the level of terrorism is one of the things. The other thing, as I mentioned, is they're for the money, and they basically have a devil's deal with several African governments serving in part as a praetorian guard and in exchange are able to loot the natural resources of the country. And this is another key here of why, to answer your question of why are they in Africa, look at the countries that they're in. Mali, as you mentioned, gold, Central African Republic, and Sudan. Let's take a look at the last two real quickly here. I mentioned the CNN report of gold smuggling from Sudan. Human Rights Watch and other organizations have also done excellent reporting on recent Wagner atrocities in the gold mining regions in the Central African Republic. Basically, under the guise of an anti-guerrilla operation, they've moved in, taken over the gold mining areas in the Central African Republic. There are credible numerous credible reports of them massacring the gold miners and then kidnapping children, young teens to work in those gold mines, open pit gold mines or diamond mines. We know also that there is a gold processing plant that had been run by a subsidiary of one of Prigozhin's companies, the company is called Meroe Gold in Sudan, where the Russians also have been receiving the gold from the gold mining regions of Sudan, processing it, and then being sent to Moscow hidden on flights. Their cargo is not being declared as gold. Shipments, as much as CNN report estimates in this year alone, $1.9 billion worth of gold going from the Sudan. This is gold probably mined both in Sudan and then also in the Central African Republic, brought into this processing plant, refined, makes it untraceable. It's bulky, but it allows you to evade international sanctions and then sent to Russia, via Latakia airfield in Syria, on Russian military aircraft. That is part of the Wagner operation. That is a Wagner operative who's supervising both security at the gold processing plant, and we know that, like I said, Meroe Gold was a subsidiary of one of Prigozhin's companies. Recently, in order to obscure this trail, this gold scene, the Russians tried to have a Syrian company called Al-Solag stood up and take over the gold Meroe Gold account. Now you mentioned earlier about the bureaucracy of some of these organizations. Well, CNN and its thorough report noticed that the liabilities noticed by Meroe Gold were exactly the same as noticed in Al-Solag because when you transfer assets between a company, you also have to transfer all of the liabilities. Now I don't know why they thought they had to transfer all exactly the same liabilities, but this shows exactly that Meroe Gold and Al-Solag basically are still the same part of the gold smuggling operation being run by Wagner. And this is one of the reasons also why designating Wagner as a foreign terrorist organization could have an impact on this because then if that was done, then companies like Al-Solag, its members, and those who support it, including Sudanese government officials, could be liable to criminal sanctions for supporting a foreign terrorist organization gold smuggling operation. But to get back to your original question, why are they there? Partly for reasons for statecraft, but mostly for the money, and this is a large part of how the money is done by these illegal gold smuggling operations from the Central African Republic, Sudan, and now we see in Mali and other places.
Mcfarlane: Yelena, Philip, thank you so much for joining us. And Richard, it's great to have you on as always.
Vasilevsky: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Mcfarlane: That brings us to the end of this week's episode of One Decision. If you enjoyed this podcast, do subscribe to us so you never miss an episode. We drop new podcasts every Thursday. From me and the team, see you next time.
