Solitudinem fecerunt,
pacem appelunt
Publius Gaius Cornelius Tacitus
Syria - Russian Intervention - 2018
In the most deadly clash between American and Russian forces since the early Cold War, on 07 February 2018, the US military said that it killed more than 100 Syrian militiamen allied with the government of President Bashar Assad. This was after some 500 fighters had targeted “well-established Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters” in Deir al-Zor province in what the Pentagon called an “unprovoked attack.”
The Russian Defense Ministry later said 25 Syrian militia fighters had been wounded in the airstrike. The ministry added that they came under attack while conducting a reconnaissance operation that was not coordinated with the Russian side. No Russian military servicemen were in the area, according to the ministry.
Dozens -- perhaps hundreds, by some accounts -- of Russian mercenaries were killed or wounded in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor on February 7-8 in fighting with the US military and its Syrian-rebel allies. They went as hired soldiers to protect [oligarch] Yevgeny Prigozhin's pipeline, since they were guarding the oil fields around Palmyra.
Many of the Wagner Group's mercenaries had already been deployed in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region. Vladimir Yefimov, head of a foundation for veterans of special forces in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, said that mercenaries are often former officers, officer cadets and army sergeants. Some of them were signed on by the Ministry of Defense and sent to Syria as military staff. "Anyone who was not accepted because of age or disability went to the private army," explains Yefimov, adding that the motive was not money but rather a desire for adventure.
Ruslan Tarnavskyi said they went to Syria out of patriotic conviction. "A private army is obviously not a government force, but everyone thought they were working with the Russian army. The money was a welcome bonus for the risk, but the boys didn't go there because for that," says Tarnavskyi. He said that if the Syrian operation were not a pro-Russian campaign, 99 percent of the men would not take part in it.
The contracts that mercenaries sign when they go to Syria have no legal status in the Russian Federation. Generally, they include provisions that 1 million rubles ($18,000) will be paid in the event of injury and 2 million ($36,000) in the case of death. The recruiters who send these guys to Syria are responsible for these payment. Donbas military commander Aleksandr Borodai was given the order to "utilize" the large number of people who had seen with their own eyes that you can change the government by nonelectoral means [the Russian term "utilize" is ambiguous, since while it seems to mean "make use of" it normally means "dispose of" - when a ship is scrapped, it is "utilized"].
The Russian government had been reluctant to talk about the incident, saying on 15 February 2018 that "about five" Russians "may have been killed" and, on February 20, that "several dozen" Russian and other former Soviet citizens were injured. The United States estimated that about 100 fighters were killed in the incident, without specifying their nationalities. Many of the wounded mercenaries from the Wagner Group, [Vagner] commercial security firm have been evacuated to Russia and are being treated in military hospitals. There was no helicopter cover or evacuation support because the Vagner units do not have helicopters.
According to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, 50 mercenaries were killed and around 70 injured. Ultranationalist State Duma deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky said the number of dead was more than 300. Nationalist military analyst Viktor Alksnis said it was 334.
According to some acounts, reinforcements came from the Vesna [Spring] battalion. That is a Donbas battalion (named after a region of eastern Ukraine where Russia-backed separatists control territory) which gets paid rather less than the Vagner regulars, although it is technically part of the Vagner force. But according to the U.S. Defense Department, the attack by the Russians and pro-government Syrian forces on February 7 was repulsed by fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces and U.S. military personnel -- not mercenaries.
Media reports about alleged “dozens” or “hundreds” killed Russian military servicemen in Syria are “classic disinformation” that was launched by anti-government militants, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated 15 February 2018. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at her weekly news conference “Preliminary data shows the armed confrontation, the reasons of which are currently being investigated, could have resulted in deaths of five people, presumably Russian citizens,” the spokeswoman said, adding that their citizenship still needs to be checked.
Several dozen citizens of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States were injured in Syria during “a recent military clash,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said 20 February 2018. No military personnel were among the casualties. The ministry reiterated that the Russian citizens involved in the recent clashes in Syria were not part of the Russian military force deployed there. “There are Russian citizens in Syria, who went there on their own will and for various purposes. It’s not up to the Foreign Ministry to judge the legality of the decisions taken by those people,” the statement said.
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