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Patriot PMC

Private military company (PMC) is a commercial enterprise offering specialized services related to the protection, protection (defense) of someone and something, often with participation in military conflicts, as well as with the collection of intelligence information, strategic planning, logistics and consulting.

The Patriot PMC reportedly employs current and former SSO/FSB TsSN members. An officer of the Ministry of Defense, comparing the new PMC with the "Wagner group", noted that the "Patriot" pay more and better set combat missions. According to Shabaev, "depending on the specialization, salaries can reach from 400,000 to a million rubles. The work takes a month or two, there are no longer contracts.

Ever since the inception of "Blackwater" private miltary companies have been on the rise globally. These companies are comprised (for the most part) of retired "special military operators". These men find themselves post retirement lacking a good paycheck. On top of that, most of these guys are used to living a high adrenaline life style while they are "serving" in their respective branches. Many of these men enter service at the young age of 17-18, 19 so the military life is all they know. Once they get discharged, they find out that the civilian life is extremely boring compared to what it was on the "inside". They get hungry for more adventure so they sign up for these PMC's.

The military company is mentioned along with PMC "Wagner" in an appeal to the authorities (available at the disposal of the Rain), which was signed by retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, the head of the international public organization "Honor and Motherland" Vladimir Petrov and the chairman of the committee "All-Russian Officers' Assembly" Evgeny Shabaev. All three confirmed to Dozhd in June 2018 that they knew about the existence of the Patriot PMC. The statement contains a demand to determine the legal status of the Russians who fought as part of PMCs, to be sent to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Supreme Court and the Presiden.

The authors warned of a coming crisis in the veterans' movement: for three years now, the All-Russian Officers' Assembly has been receiving complaints from those wounded in battles in Syria who do not receive "social, rehabilitation and economic support" from the state due to the lack of legal status for PMC employees.

In 2018, it was reported that the PMC "Patriot" is associated with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It has been participating in hostilities since the spring of 2018 and is formed from regular military personnel. It was alleged that the PMC has active specialists from the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation [ie, GRU] and fighters of the Special Operations Forces.

In November, the Ukrainian Resistance reported that the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was strengthening his position in the Russian Federation and wanted to punish Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the defeat of the invaders on the battlefield in Ukraine. The CNS claims that Prigozhin blamed Shoigu and the head of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for the failures.

The Dozhd TV channel reported that a new Russian private military company, Patriot, was participating in the fighting in Syria, in addition to the infamous Wagner PMC. "PMC Wagner" took part in the fighting in eastern Ukraine on the side of the pro-Russian separatists, then in the war in Syria on the side of the forces of Bashar al-Assad. It is believed that the company is associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is part of Vladimir Putin's circle. (Prigozhin denies any connection with the PMC.) In February, the Wagnerites suffered losses near Deir ez-Zor, allegedly on a mission to seize an oil facility - and Prigozhin's companies were allegedly engaged in the development of Syrian fields. Now, according to some reports , a company associated with Prigozhin has taken up gold mining in Sudan, and Wagner PMC fighters had been spotted there.

By late 2022, against the backdrop of an unsuccessful campaign in the direction of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Vuhledar, as well as in the Lugansk region, the Russians are trying to break through and achieve at least some result, throwing all their forces into battle. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu's Patriot Private Military Company (PMC), which is competing with Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner PMC, has been spotted near Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast.

Serhii Cherevatyi, spokesman for the Eastern grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during the national joint 24/7 newscast: "In particular, in the area of Stepne on the Vuhledar front, we have noticed that in addition to Wagner PMC, Patriot PMC, affiliated with the current Russian Defence Minister Shoigu, has appeared. Obviously, they are pulling up all combat capabilities to achieve at least some results." Cherevatyi, commenting on rumors of a conflict between Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner PMC and Sergei Shoigu's Patriot PMC, called them competitive. At the same time, they are in different "theatres of war". In his opinion, there is no direct interaction between them. In November 2022, the Ukrainian Resistance reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC, was strengthening his position in Russia and wants to punish Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Cherevaty noted that there is competition between Wagner and Patriot PMCs. "Prigozhin really wants to show his subjectivity such as military-political or political-power. He wants to show that he is very successful, that he is even better than the armed forces. But according to many sources, Prigozhin focuses more on Surovikin, while Gerasimov and Shoigu are like a separate group. Therefore, how will PMCs behave further? For now, they are just on different sectors of the front," he said.

Since 2014, Wagner PMC has been involved in the Donbass, where it performed the combat missions of the Kremlin proxies represented by the leadership of the self-proclaimed republics. In 2015, its fighters began to be involved in the military conflict in Syria . Thus, the military-political leadership of the Russian Federation solved two problems. Firstly, it "employed" militants who were returning from Donbass and creating problems for others. And secondly, it ensured the fulfillment of such illegal tasks as the capture and protection of oil facilities far from the Kremlin walls and dungeons.

In 2016, Moscow gained geopolitical and commercial interests in Asia and Africa. And no one wanted to rely only on Wagner. This is how the "Patriot" appeared - an even more closed and more complex structure than its older sister.

"The legislation of many African countries allows you to register and liquidate any private enterprise within 24 hours. Opened a military or security structure - and shoot legally. In the structure of "Patriot", as far as I know, there are more than 10 firms, read: detachments or mini-PMCs with their own tasks. They work in Sudan, Gabon, the Central African Republic. Together, these are thousands of people," said Yevgeny Shibaev, head of one of the Russian officer associations, in an interview with Sobesednik.

According to him, from the very beginning, the Patriot mercenaries were much better financially than the Wagnerians. If the latter were paid 150-240 thousand rubles a month, then in the Patriot the rates were higher - from 400 thousand to a million. "But there are more serious tasks: not only security, but also intellectual services, for example, in the cyber sphere. And the selection is suitable - people with a serious track record, and not just volunteers with a desire to fight, "explains Shibaev.

According to the Russian media and veteran organizations of the Russian Federation, the beginning of the Patriot operation coincided in a strange way with the defeat of the Wagnerites in February 2018 near the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. Then, according to the New York Times , there was a four-hour battle between the US military and Syrian government forces, supported by Russian mercenaries. As a result, about a hundred "Wagnerites" were destroyed.

The fighting began at the oil plant "Konoko", where the Kurds and their American allies were based. Assad's troops, with the support of the Russians, pulled in about half a thousand military personnel, tanks and armored personnel carriers (about 27 pieces of equipment). Three Russian T-72 tanks with 125 mm guns were seen. The positions of the Kurds were attacked from tanks, artillery and mortars. Later it turned out that the American Delta Force special forces and the rangers tried to contact the command of regular Russian troops in Syria to stop the offensive, but Sergei Shoigu's subordinates did not react.

After that, the US military raised fighters and bombers, artillery and Javelin anti-tank systems began to work from the ground - and Syrian troops with Russian mercenaries suffered heavy losses and were forced to retreat. Thus, everyone agreed that the death of the Wagnerites near Deir ez-Zor is on the conscience of the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense, headed by Shoigu.

Very soon after the demonstrative defeat near Deir ez-Zor , information appeared about another PMC that operates in Syria under the name "Patriot". Its source was the Russian TV channel Dozhd, which directly connected the new structure with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Around the same time, a rival of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin, created a media group to carry out his information operations and called it the same - "Patriot". It is not clear - Putin's cook wanted to confuse potential opponents, or did he simply not have enough imagination?

"At a certain stage, Shoigu was imbued with the success of the Wagner owner. He began to wonder: is the Kremlin cook getting too much? The minister is also a person, he really wants to cut budgets. And I don't want to silently bring cartridges and weapons to Prigozhin's butchers, who were obviously recruited on the basis of an advertisement, "the author of an article in one of the Russian media explains the motives of the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

So Shoigu came to a simple conclusion: if a competitor has a Wagner PMC, then it is urgently necessary to create a PMC for himself. So that she fulfills his tasks, and most importantly, earns money, which, in fact, rested on the conflict from the very beginning. But as soon as the first reports about the Patriot PMC appeared, the conflict between Shoigu and Prigozhin moved to the Central African Republic. The turning point was the murder of Russian journalists from the film crew of Orkhan Dzhemal.

PMC "Patriot" not only switched over part of the orders of the Kremlin to perform combat missions in conflict zones. According to the journalists of the Dozhd TV channel, it could be involved in the death of Russian journalists in the Central African Republic. In July 2018, well-known journalist Orkhan Dzhemal, director Alexander Rastorguev and cameraman Kirill Radchenko arrived in the Central African Republic to shoot a documentary about the activities of Russian private military companies in the country. Their bodies were found in the car in which they traveled. According to the investigative committee of the Russian Federation, the journalists were killed during a robbery.

However, few believed it. After the murder of Dzhemal's group, suspicion immediately fell on Prigozhin's militants. And employees of RIA FAN, a media outlet controlled by him, organized a special information operation against Mikhail Khodorkovski's Investigation Management Center , accusing its owner personally of the death of journalists. By the way, the killed journalists cooperated with this Center.

And subsequently, an investigation into the circumstances of the death of the film crew on the Dozhd TV channel came out. It spoke about the involvement in the murder of the private military company "Patriot". This version was reported to Dozhd at once by three sources: an officer of the Russian Ministry of Defense, a fighter from the PMC Patriot, and a veteran of the Russian special services, who is familiar with one of the members of the group that allegedly participated in the murder of journalists.

"Thus, either the Dozhd journalists, by order of Prigozhin, frame Shoigu. Or Shoigu really ordered to kill journalists in order to set up Prigozhin's mercenaries and squeeze him out of the Central African Republic. As always, the Russians do not ask anyone to kill their fellow citizens - they do a great job themselves," wrote Dmitry Zolotukhin, ex-Deputy Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine, in an analytical material for the online publication Petr and Mazepa.

Shoigu's mercenaries are not much different from Prigozhin's mercenaries. These are only competing "firms" whose owners compete for the right to lock in the financial flows that the Kremlin directs to its military-political adventures.