Russia's shadowy world of military contractors: independent mercenaries, or working for the Kremlin?

Stanislav Matveev left his home in the Ural Mountains in September to join a Russian private military company. Five months later, Matveev was dead, killed in a U.S. airstrike on Feb. 7 in eastern Syria.

Matveev's widow, Yelena Matveeva, wants answers from the Kremlin about why her husband is dead. By some accounts, scores of Russian contractors were killed.

"I'd like everyone to know about my husband," she said in an interview with Znak, a Russian news site. "And not only about my husband, but about all the boys who died there so stupidly. Where were they sent to, and why? They didn't even have protection, they were like pigs sent to slaughter!"

But just who sent them? There's no easy answer.

The Ministry of Defense and the Kremlin do not officially associate with the private military companies, but media reports and researchers say they have pieced together enough evidence to suggest that the mercenaries are being employed, or at least directed, by the Russian military. The Kremlin denies this.

Little is known publicly about the military groups and how they operate, but they've gained a higher profile since the Feb. 7 airstrike in Syria. The U.S. said it was responding to an attack by hundreds of forces supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad near the Syrian city of Deir al Zor.

Russian media have reported that at least eight of those killed were Russian mercenaries, though some reports put the death toll at close to 200 — an assertion Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissed as "misinformation" from the Western press.

"There were not 400, not 200, not 1,000, and not 10," Zakharova said.

The government has confirmed five, but not eight, deaths, while stressing the men were not members of the Russian armed forces. According to interviews with family members of the eight identified, the mercenaries all were in Syria on contract with a private military company called the Wagner Group.

 

Source: latimes