The Wagner Group is a private military company (PMC) with ties to the Russian state under Vladimir Putin that had conducted operations in Syria since late 2015. Their presence in the country had been reported as late as 2021.
Arrival and capture of Palmyra and al-Shaer The presence of the PMCs in Syria was first reported in late October 2015, almost a month after the start of the Russian military intervention in the country's civil war, when between three and nine PMCs were killed in a rebel mortar attack on their position in Latakia province. It was reported that the Wagner Group was employed by the Russian Defense Ministry, even though private military companies are illegal in Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry dismissed the early reports by The Wall Street Journal about the Wagner Group's operations in Syria as an "information attack". However, sources within the Russian FSB and the Defense Ministry unofficially stated for RBTH that Wagner was supervised by the GRU.
Furthermore, according to a few Wagner fighters, they were flown to Syria aboard Russian military transport planes. Others were transported to Syria by the Syrian Cham Wings airline from the Rostov-on-Don Airport, with 51 round trips being made between January 2017 and March 2018. Their equipment was delivered to Syria via the so-called Syrian Express, a fleet of Russian military and civilian merchant ships that had been delivering supplies to Syria since 2012. Later, a Defense Ministry source told RBK TV that the FSB was also directing the PMCs. The usage of Wagner had reportedly cost Russia 170 million dollars by August 2016.
By July 2017, according to The New York Times, the Kremlin established a policy in Syria where companies that seize oil and gas wells, as well as mines, from ISIL forces would get oil and mining rights for those same sites. Two Russian companies received contracts under this policy by this time, with one employing the Wagner Group to secure those sites from the militants. Later, it was revealed that the company would receive 25 percent of the proceeds from oil and gas production at fields its PMCs captured and secured from ISIL. Some reports stated that the contracts with Damascus were established after Wagner lost the trust and financing of the Russian Defense Ministry in early 2016. As of early August 2017, the number of Wagner employees in Syria was reported to have reached 5,000, after the arrival of an additional 2,000 PMCs, including Chechens and Ingush.
Wagner PMCs were involved in both Palmyra offensives in 2016 and 2017, as well as the Syrian Army's campaign in central Syria in the summer of 2017 and the Battle of Deir ez-Zor in late 2017. They were in the role of frontline advisors, fire and movement coordinatorsOwen Matthews. PUTIN'S SECRET ARMIES WAGED WAR IN SYRIA—WHERE WILL THEY FIGHT NEXT?, Newsweek, 17 January 2018. and forward air controllers who provided guidance to close air support. When they arrived in Syria the PMCs received T-72 tanks, BM-21 Grad MLRs and 122 mm D-30 howitzers. During the first Palmyra offensive, according to one of the contractors, the PMCs were used as "cannon fodder" and most of the work was conducted by them, with the regular Syrian Army, who he described as "chickens", only finishing the job. An expert on Russian security at the IIR, Mark Galeotti, said they served as "shock troops" alongside the Syrian Army."How 'Wagner' came to Syria" The Economist, 2 November 2017.
Following the successful conclusion of the offensive, during which 32 of the contractors were reportedly killed and about 80 wounded, the PMCs were withdrawn between April and May 2016, and they surrendered all of their heavy weapons and military equipment. When they returned for the second Palmyra offensive and to capture ISIL-held oil fields at the beginning of 2017, the PMCs reportedly faced a shortage of weapons and equipment as they were issued only older assault rifles, machine guns, T-62 tanks and M-30 howitzers. Several sniper rifles and grenade launchers were delivered a few weeks later, which did not solve the issue.
According to Fontanka, the equipment problems in combination with a reported reduction in the quality of its personnel led to Wagner suffering a significantly higher number of casualties in the second battle for Palmyra than the first one. Between 40 and 60 were reported killed and between 80 and 180 were wounded. The Russian investigative blogger group the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) attributed the higher losses mainly to ISIL's heavy use of suicide-bombers and the militant group's unwillingness to negotiate. Still, the second offensive also ended in a victory for pro-government forces.
Besides fighting ISIL militants, according to RBK TV, the PMCs trained a Syrian Army unit called the ISIS Hunters, which was also fully funded and trained by Russian special forces. The ISIS Hunters were one of the leading units during the capture of the al-Shaer gas fields from ISIL in late April 2017, as part of the 2017 Eastern Homs offensive. However, as of the beginning of July, the PMCs were still fighting to secure the al-Shaer gas fields and the areas of the phosphate mines. Still, in mid-September, the al-Shaer gas fields started getting back into production. Subsequently, the PMCs were in charge of guarding the refineries, with ISIL occasionally making attempts to retake the fields, each time being beaten back. During one attack, a PMC was tortured to death by ISIL.
Killing of Muhammad Abdullah al-Ismail In early July 2017, a video emerged that showed Wagner PMCs bludgeoning a man who was initially believed to be a captured ISIL militant in the Palmyra area.
More than two years later, full footage was uploaded to a closed VKontakte group for members of Wagner with new information asserting that the killed person was a Syrian Army soldier who had deserted. The contractors also accused the man, named Muhammad Abdullah al-Ismail (or Mohammed Taha Ismail Al-Abdullah a.k.a. Hamdi Bouta) from the village of Alkhorayta in Deir ez-Zor, of being a jihadist for wanting to desert. Ismail had fled Syria earlier in the war for Lebanon, before returning in 2017, after which he was arrested and forcibly conscripted into the Syrian military. After he was killed, his body was mutilated and burned. In the video of the killing, a second severed head of an unidentified person could be seen lying on the ground.
A Russian independent media report identified one of the perpetrators as Stanislav Yevgenyevich Dychko, a confirmed operative of the Wagner Group who previously worked for the Russian Interior Ministry. A second one was identified as a former soldier named Ruslan from Bryansk, currently employed as a "patriotic educator" in local schools. Arab media also established the place of the murder to be the al-Shaer oilfield near Homs. Further investigation by Russian media in December 2019 identified the remaining perpetrators as Vladimir B., Dzhakhongyr M. ("Pamir"), Ruslan ("Chichi") and Vladislav Apostol, who was killed in Syria in February 2018. The Novaya Gazeta newspaper sent the material from its investigation into the killing to the office of the Prosecutor General of Russia, as well as the Investigative Committee of Russia, however no criminal cases were opened as a result.
In March 2021, human rights lawyers from three nongovernmental organizations representing the killed person's brother filed a lawsuit in Moscow against six Wagner Group PMCs accused of the killing. In December 2021, the Council of the European Union sanctioned Utkin for the killing, stating in a resolution that "According to a former member of the Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin personally ordered the torturing to death of the deserter as well as the filming of the act."
Push into Deir ez-Zor and clearing of Hama In mid-September 2017, the PMCs helped Syrian troops to capture the town of Uqayribat from ISIL in the central Hama province. Several PMCs were killed during the fighting for the town and their bodies were seized by the militants. One week later, the PMCs, along with regular Russian troops, supported Syrian government forces in repelling a HTS-led rebel offensive north of Hama. At the end of that month, during an ISIL counter-offensive in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate, two Wagner PMCs were captured by the militants. Initially, the Kremlin attempted to distance itself from the two, while a brother of one of them accused the Russian government of rejecting them.
Subsequently, the Syrian ISIS Hunters unit pledged to pay one million dollars for the release of each of the captive Russians. However, the ISIS Hunters also said they would execute 100 captive militants for each of the Russians if they were killed by the jihadists. At the same time, a Russian parliamentary official stated that the two had almost certainly been executed, presumably for refusing to reject their Christian Orthodox religion, reject Russia, become Muslims and join the militant group.2 Russians Who Refused to Reject Jesus on Camera 'Almost Certainly' Killed by ISIS The Christian Post, 6 October 2017.Депутат Госдумы заявил о возможной казни в Сирии двух якобы плененных россиян Interfax, 5 October 2017. This claim was questioned by the CIT, who pointed out that there had been no reports of this effect from the militants' sources."28 сентября пришло 12 гробов" Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 6 October 2017.
In late October 2017, a video emerged on YouTube glorifying the PMCs actions in Syria. Between the end of October and the start of November, Wagner took part in the Battle of Deir ez-Zor where they cleared the remaining ISIL militants from the districts of Al-Rashidiyah and Al-Ardi, as well as the Al-Bazh and Abu-Adad neighborhoods, along with the Syrian Army. Three or four companies of Wagner PMCs were involved in the fighting. Syrian government forces took complete control of the city by 3 November. A besieged pocket of ISIL militants remained on an island in the city's outskirts, which soon came under attack. As government forces advanced, the pro-opposition SOHR reported that Russia demanded the release of the two captive PMCs during negotiations with the trapped militants.
On 17 November, the last ISIL fighters on the island had surrendered, leaving the Syrian Army in control of all territory surrounding Deir ez-Zor city. However, the two PMCs were still prisoners. At the end of November, it was reported that the Russian military was negotiating for the release of the two PMCs who were reportedly being held on the border of Syria and Iraq. However, on 4 December, the ISIS Hunters reported they had killed the commander of the ISIL militants that had captured and executed the two PMCs. The same day, a Wagner representative notified the parents of one of the two that both had died in captivity.
At the end of November, Russia announced plans to withdraw some of its troops from Syria by the end of the year. It was reported that to avoid potential security losses, Russia would fill the void with private military companies, including Wagner. On 11 December, Putin declared victory against "terrorists" during a visit to Russia's Khmeimim air base in Syria.
Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies think tank, stated the usage of PMCs was one of the factors that contributed to Russia's victory in Syria. He pointed out that Russia managed to remove the need for deploying large numbers of ground forces by bringing in the Russian PMCs who, unlike American PMCs who were usually only in support roles, were used as highly capable assault troops and that they were often embedded with Syrian units to increase their fighting ability. He also pointed out that the Russian public proved completely indifferent to the losses suffered by the PMCs, believing that "these people are highly paid, and knew what they were getting into".