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- [00:01]
Candace Rondeau
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- [00:52]
Alan Rosenstein
Hi, I'm Alan Rosenstein, research director at Lawfare and a law professor at the University of Minnesota. If you know me, it's probably as the guy who spent a year obsessively following the saga of the TikTok ban. I've been involved with Lawfare since I was a law student nearly 15 years ago, and what's kept me here is its core independent, non partisan expert analysis delivered at the pace of news. And that kind of careful work only matters more as emerging technologies move faster than the policies meant to govern them. Lawfare is a 501c3 nonprofit and we keep everything free. That only works if listeners like you pitch in, head to lawfaremedia.org support and become a material supporter. Even $10 a month really does make a difference. Thanks for listening.
- [01:49]
Candace Rondeau
And there are a lot of actors that are really deeply affected by these operations, and I think we're starting to see an escalation, if not of, but certainly an escalation of military presence in response to the shadow fleet. That's a bit troubling.
- [02:04]
Justin Sherman
It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Justin Sherman, contributing editor at Lawfare and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, with Candace Rondeau, founder and principal of Frontline Atlas, an independent geopolitical risk hub and a professor with the Future Security Initiative at Arizona State University.
- [02:23]
Candace Rondeau
When we think about the cooperation between Russia and Iran at the state level, you always have to know that there's a shadow level as well. And that bears watching because I think it will be really transformative. And in some ways, you know, if you can get your oil to market in the case of Iran or in case of Russia, there's not a lot of incentive for you to start coming to the negotiating table. And I think that's a factor that we need to keep our eye on.
- [02:45]
Justin Sherman
Today we're talking about the current state of Russian private military companies, their global operations and connections everywhere from Ukraine to Iran and Mali and what's coming next? Let's jump right in. When you joined us last year, Candice, we were talking about your then recently published book, Putin's Sledgehammer, and among other things, what had happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner group in Russia. And so give us the overview. What has the Wagner Group been up to for the last year or so since we last spoke to you? And what is the current state of its organization and its operations?
- [03:25]
Candace Rondeau
Yeah, well, thanks for having me on a quick recap to sort of connect the dots from where we were just about a year ago. First of all, as we all know, the Wagner group, as led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former CEO, was dissolved, really in the summer of 2023 after his rebellion against the Putin regime and his march on Moscow. And then of course, his rather mysterious, although not so mysterious, death in a plane crash in August of 2023. And even as that was happening, we saw the Ministry of Defense start to reposition itself as the main manager or operational manager of these contract forces that were ostensibly cast as private military, militias or contingents, but in reality were always connected to the Ministry of Defense through an arm's length arrangement with Prigozhin. That arrangement, of course, collapsed, and when it did, Wagner split into three branches, really. One was called the First Volunteer Corps, and this was sort of the bulk of the forces. These were guys who had fought in Ukraine in places like Bakhmut, really hard battlefield situations, and they didn't want to leave because of course, they had earned quite a lot and there was much to be gained from staying involved. And the first Volunteer Court largely is overseen by Rasgvardia, the National Guard of Russia. And that's sort of a reflection of an age old relationship with Putin and the head of the National Guard at the time. There is a third branch that was streamed into Belarus. And you know, Wagner already had a footprint in Belarus dating back to at least the pandemic times when it was difficult for any air traffic getting out of Russia into the Middle east and Africa. So Belarus became a sort of important hub. And subsequent to that, Belarus has also been a really important partner for probing operations on the western border of the NATO parameters. And so there you have an estimated maybe 400, 500 Wagner remnants who have been tasked with overseeing the training of the Belarus Special Forces. And that's gone, I think, relatively well, at least from a, from a Belarus perspective, maybe not necessarily from a Russian perspective. And then the third branch is the one that I think is the one that everybody understands and knows better, which is the Africa Corps, which is a paramilitary expeditionary force, really substantially not terribly different from Wagner in form, even though maybe in name and brand, it's a little bit different. We've seen Africa Corps over the last year take a lot of hits in places like the Sahel, particularly in Mali. We'll talk about that a little bit. But to kind of just describe what Africa Corps is and sort of where it sits within the overall infrastructure of the Ministry of Defense. It is largely managed by the gru, and it primarily serves a purpose of providing partnered operations with Russian client states in Africa. So that's, you know, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, to a lesser extent, at various points, it had been Sudan, Central African Republic. There has been some expansion of the Africa Core footprint over the last year into places like Togo and Guinea. This is a reflection in some, you know, in some ways of Russia's capacity for expansion of its oil and energy infrastructure in the region, particularly for Gazprom, which has long coveted some of the offshore, you know, opportunities for oil and gas in the region. And so we've seen Africa Corps spread its wings, but at the same time, we've also seen Africa Core take a lot of heavy hits on the battlefield.
- [07:22]
Justin Sherman
Well, thank you for that. And as you know, we often hear about Africa Core, and I'm thinking of news stories as well that probably are a little bit conflating that with all of what Wagner turned into. So we'll dig more into that in a minute. But why don't we start? You mentioned several countries, and I sort of want to go by area of operations before we get into some other subjects. So let's start with Ukraine has what's left of Wagner. You mentioned some anecdotes there been involved in any way in sort of the last 12 or so months with Russia's continued onslaught in the country, or what does that look like today?
- [08:00]
Candace Rondeau
So now those forces technically fall under the management still of the Ministry of Defense, but under a hub called Redut, which means basically fort or fortress. And Redut is really a predecessor of what we know as the Wagner Group. It had a kind of competitor named Moran Security Group. And Redut is run by a guy named Konstantin Mirzaen and some legacy commanders, like a guy named Anton Trochev, who was very big in the Wagner Group command. But technically, this is a little bit more of a hub. I think it's a better way to think of it than it is a standalone organization. So it's a management tool for Recruiting and deploying contract soldiers to the Ukrainian front. As you can imagine, not many people in Russia are eager to go to the Ukrainian front. And we can talk a little bit about some of the manpower issues that we've been seeing there that has led to the recruitment of, of everybody from North Koreans to Africans from Kenya and South Africa over the last year. So you have a situation where Redut as a hub kind of has these competing needs. One is to stream contract soldiers into Ukraine and the other is to stream them into Africa Corps. And the challenge is you might sign up for Africa Corps and find yourself suddenly rotated to Ukraine. There was a story last year reported by RFERL by a young man who I think was in his 20s, Russian guy who had a big car loan. A lot of debt that he was trying to resolve. And this is now one of the new recruitment tactics is not only will you get a bonus and better pay than your average Russian soldier, but you also will have your loans and your debts dissolved. And that's a big deal in a place where unemployment and high credit risk is actually pretty rampant. So anyway, this young man joined up for what he thought was going to be an IT position with the Africa Corps, but ended up being deployed to Ukraine. And there he was caught. And I think he ultimately defected. But that's just one example of the situation where you have these competing needs that Russia is trying to meet, both on the battlefield in Ukraine and then in this sort of this rear guard action in Africa, which is really critical for sanctions evasion, but also building inroads to markets that Russia would not be able to otherwise access. And Russia needs markets because it is caught off from most of Europe and most of Asia and most of the rest of the world. And so Africa has really served as a really important pivot point.
- [10:34]
Justin Sherman
Yeah, I want to get to that in a moment. Just because you mention it, have the PMCs been playing a role in that recruitment pipeline from other areas? I mean, maybe in Russia too, but beyond Russia to the Ukrainian front?
- [10:48]
Candace Rondeau
Well, it's interesting. So one of the other offshoots of the Wagner sort of breakup in 2023 is an organization called the Wagner Group ISTRA. And this is I kind of think of as more of a marketing vehicle than anything else. It's run largely by commanders who gained a lot of notoriety for their fight on the battlefield in Ukraine during the 2023, well, 2022-2024 period. Many of them came back. They, you know, became sort of notable heroes, and they went on the circuit around Russia to like, schools and, you know, different sort of public events as almost like an advertisement for the kind of virility of the Russian way of war under the Wagner Group brand. And so that kind of continues. You can sort of see them online. They're very active. They are an important vector for recruitment, just as everything else online is also, you know, Unva Kontaktia used to be on Telegram before it was banned. Groups like Wagner Group Istra and commanders who'd sort of obtained a certain notoriety for their flexing on the battlefield were a really important advertisement for getting new recruits.
- [12:00]
Justin Sherman
Interesting. And you mentioned Telegram. I had have been wondering the past few days about that impacting recruitment and other things. But that's, that's a whole other discussion. So this is a good transition to one issue among others that I know you've been tracking in your research and advisory work, which is the involvement of Russian PMCs in Russia's Shadow Flight fleet. That is, as many listeners know, the fleet of ships that Russia uses, such as under the flags of other countries or fraudulent documents and so forth to do things like move oil illicitly around the world. And Candace, in your answer, of course, feel free to modify my definition if you see it differently, but I'm curious if you could give us a rundown of the latest state of the shadow fleet and then what you've been finding in your work there vis a vis the PMCs.
- [12:53]
Candace Rondeau
Yeah. So the interesting thing about the shadow fleet is it is one of these unintended consequences of the economic warfare strategy that really started in the first Trump administration and then began to expand pretty aggressively under the Biden administration. And since then, in the new Trump administration, we've seen kind of a shift in emphasis between cracking down on illicit oil that is brought to market by Iran versus Venezuela versus Russia. There is a little bit more prioritization, as I'm sure you can imagine from a Trump perspective, on Iran. First initially it was also Venezuela. Russia, interestingly, has become less of a focus, and there are some ancillary effects of that. But the way to describe the shadow fleet is exactly as you just did, which is these are more often than not old oil tankers that are in many cases in pretty bad shape. On average, they're about 15 to 20 years old. So, you know, there's not actually these days a really big shipbuilding market for these tankers. It takes a long time to make them. And so this old inventory has become part of really what is a globally integrated network of tankers that have loose paperwork is probably the best way to describe them, they maybe don't have a classification. They fly under flags of convenience, often from Africa and other sort of smaller states like Seychelles or Malta. Occasionally you might find the Marshall Islands in there, mixed in there. Oman, Dubai are some other places. And they typically are managed by brokers in maritime services who kind of operate on the underside of the licit market, where they're kind of benefiting from the arbitrage between different sanctions regimes that have been adopted by the United States, by the eu, the uk in prior days, there was a lot more alignment across the G7 bloc in terms of, you know, sanctioning vessels and sanctioning maritime service providers that were involved in moving Russian oil to market. Nowadays, we see a lot more fragmentation simply because the Trump administration is taking a new tack, different from its partners across the transatlantic. So what we have been seeing and what kind of attracted our attention, not surprisingly, was there were a lot of reports last year from primarily the EU that interdictions of shadow fleet vessels, so stopping them for inspection because they're flying maybe false flags or they're operating in a shady way, resulted in reports of Russian military men or paramilitaries on board. And it turned out in several cases that these supernumeraries, as they're called, were basically put on board to do overwatch of the. Of the vessel's transit, but also overwatch of the actual crew and also to prevent potential boarding and interdiction. Because, of course, we've seen in the last year or so a lot more aggressive tack in terms of interdiction and intervention into shadow fleet operations, not just from the eu, but also from the US and we've seen a few boardings. And so I've seen, for instance, the French captured a vessel, the Boracay, as it was entering French waters. And they found a couple of guys on board who worked for the Marin Security Group, which is really the kind of the granddaddy, along with Redout, of Russian paramilitary actors. In fact, the Wagner group really grew out of a contingent, a sort of sub contingent of the Moran Security Group way back in the day, in early 2010 and 11 and 12. And it was the Moran Security Group that really gave birth to, at the time, in the early 2000s, this kind of counter piracy effort on behalf of Russia's big oil producers like Rosneft and energy producers like Gazprom. So it's not new that you see Russian paramilitaries on board big tankers. What is new is that there's more enforcement on the part of the eu, the UK and to a lesser degree the US More kinetic interactions that have exposed other things about the dual track nature of the mission of these particular supernumeraries. In one instance, there was some allegation that a tanker that had passed through Denmark might have been a platform for drone operations that resulted in the shutdown of the airport at Copenhagen. There is the Eagle S in, in Finland, which was caught in Finnish territory waters that was accused of severing a subsea Internet cable. And of course on board were, you know, Russian paramilitaries. And. And so there's this idea now, particularly a deep concern inside of the EU and in the UK that the Shadow Fleet is doubling not only as a means of getting oil to market, but also as surveillance and sabotage. And this is really challenging, of course, because the Atlantic is a, is a big place and the Baltic Sea, of course, is a big place. And there are a lot of actors that are really deeply affected by these operations. And I think we're starting to see an escalation, if not of force, but certainly an escalation of military presence in response to the Shadow Fleet. That's a bit troubling.
- [18:36]
Justin Sherman
Definitely troubling, as you said. And including the notion of a launching pad for the operations is interesting. I mean, you're just making me think just to editorialize for 10 seconds. As you said, the cable cuts is interesting as well. Right. Another example of sometimes you see press headlines that are really, really hyped up and sort of saying that any Russian ship anywhere is cutting everything out of the water. And then at the same time, I at least personally sort of roll my eyes at some of the industry folks who say, oh, there's no way this could be anything but an accident. But in any event, this is a great point you make that I think maybe will apply to the next region I want to talk about, which is, do you see any connections between the collection of activity you're discussing with the Shadow fleet with PMCs and what's happening right now vis a vis the US Israel and Iran, as well as the Strait? Is there any touch point there to include with Russian or other kinds of oil? Or is that pretty. Are you not. Are we not seeing anything right now that sort of indicates any nexus with the Russian PMC ecosystem?
- [19:40]
Candace Rondeau
Yeah, that's really interesting. In fact, so what's super interesting about the research that we've been doing, and this is at Frontline Atlas, the platform I now run, we've been looking at roughly 200 ships that were we Kind of call them high risk because of their behaviors. So they had a pattern of, you know, turning off their AIs signals, which is kind of the beacon that serves as their position, shows where their position is when they're en route to some place. We looked at whether or not they also were reported to have had paramilitaries on board. So PMCs like Moran Security Group on board, or former Wagner soldiers. We checked the names of some of those soldiers against our own database and found, in fact, those individuals did serve in places like Africa and the Middle east and Ukraine. And so we kind of carved out out of about 2,000 ships that we were looking at, about 200, so about 10%, basically of our overall sample that we were looking at. And there are, you know, there are different estimates as to how many shadow fleet tankers there are out there. I've seen as high as 3,300 from the Ukrainian sources. It varies. But what we do know is that it's well into the hundreds and it is certainly well over 2000, most likely just because they span operations for Venezuela, Iran and Russia and sometimes even North Korea. We did look expressly at these 200 because we were really interested to see because some of them had actually had crossover with IRGC networks. So with the Quds Force and some of the shell companies that Iran has used to support transport of its oil and naphtha to and from Venezuela as an example, some of those vessels turned out to have crossover in terms of brokers and shell companies and financial rails that we were able to trace to Russian shadow fleet operators. And in particular, you might remember, Justin, this was a kind of dramatic and very weird story that happened toward the end of 2025, beginning of 2026, when there was a. A tanker called the Bella 1 that was chased by US forces out of the Caribbean waters as part of the interdiction in Venezuela. And it was pursued all the way up to the edge of Iceland and Scotland. And finally it was boarded, it turns out, and along the way it changed its flag from a Guyanese flag and sort of pulled that down and then painted, allegedly painted a Russian flag on its side and change its classification, change its registry, sort of mid journey from Guyana to Russia, which was a little bit weird and unusual. There was a naval escort from Russia that was deployed as this interdiction was unfolding. It was pretty dramatic. U.S. special Forces and Coast Guard Forces boarded. There was some assistance from the UK military. All of that was super interesting, but was more interesting as we kind of look deeper, was in Fact, of course, links to a particular broker named Baranski and another one named Shor. These two gentlemen are kind of Russian businessmen, is the best way to put that. Put it, who have been very active in the support of a digital currency firm that has backing from a Russian, a sanctioned Russian bank called Pramsvilles bank psb. And it turns out that the Bella one had actually been operated by a IRGC shell company before this whole drama unfolded in early 2026. And so we became really curious as to sort of, well, why, why would it be, you know, that the Russians would have this kind of overlap? And, of course, we looked deeper. We found that actually within this network, there were at least 28 ships that really seem to have crossover between Iranian and Russian networks. And so we followed them during this period when the treasury issued a waiver for sanctioned Russian oil and actually Iranian oil to get to market because of the energy crisis that the Strait of Hormuz has really produced over the last couple months. And what we saw was millions of barrels delivered by these shadow fleet tankers that had this crossover link between Russia and Iran. And, of course, many of the brokers and the intermediary companies are all situated in Dubai, which is another sort of interesting irony here, is you have Iran attacking the UAE in response to this incursion by the US And Israel. And, you know, most of the kind of financial and sort of corporate infrastructure for its entire shadow fleet actually sits in Dubai. So there's a little bit of irony here. But I think what we've seen now with the extension of the treasury waiver, which means now even more shadow fleet tanker oil can go to market, is Russia's starting to recoup some of its losses from earlier in the year when sanctions were really starting to bite. And I think we've seen even Russia buying gold in the last week or so. We've heard reports about that. It's not to say that Russia's fully back on its feet, but the movement of shadow fleet tankers through the Strait or from, you know, where, wherever they were deployed in the Baltics or in Asia and then moving over to China for delivery in, in India, has been a boon for Russia on the order of billions.
- [25:10]
Justin Sherman
Well, there's. I guess there's building the plane as you fly it, and then there's painting the Russian flag on the ship as you outrun the multilateral collection of vessels chasing you. But that's fascinating. I mean, I'm just as an aside for a moment, were you surprised by kind of the Russia IRGC nexus in this area or the degree of it or kind of. What was your reaction when you. When you first found that?
- [25:35]
Candace Rondeau
I wasn't surprised, I suppose I was surprised at the scale. I wasn't expecting, you know, I was expecting maybe one or two. You know, you have one example. You don't expect it to be. Be 20. But I think the bigger surprise, not for me, but I think maybe for others, is that there is this overlap between Iranian and Russian interests that penetrates almost every level. Right. We've seen that, of course, with the Shaheed drones that have been deployed in this current version of the conflict with Iran, many of them now being resupplied from Russia as opposed to being resupplied from Iran. So that's kind of interesting. I think, if most people paying attention to Russia and Iran understand that the partnership between the two has become more and more integrated over time, we see that in all kinds of levels. You see that at the level of sort of maritime exchange, defense equipment and partnership. We see it in space technologies increasingly particularly around sort of satellite deployments and the hope, for instance, of some sort of space shuttle or space station that would be an Iranian Russian partnership. So we see deeper integration between Russia and Iran, and that's been growing for a long time. Historically, there's a relationship. But I think what is interesting about the findings on the Shadow Fleet is it's just another indicator that to some degree, the economic warfare that the United States and its partners have been waging against Russia, against Iran, and to a lesser degree against Venezuela is starting to lead to this deep fusion, an overlap and almost an alternative market for getting energy to and from production sites to refineries, primarily in Asia and in other places. And I think that that integration is pointing to something else that of course, we're all starting to watch, I think very closely, which is the rise of digital currency payment rails in China as an alternative for settlement of oil transfers and oil trades that we've now seen for Iran, but also other players and a concern that perhaps China can be much more of a competitor, much more influential on the value overall of the currency market, and could be a competitor to the dollar.
- [27:52]
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- [31:35]
Justin Sherman
So you've mentioned a collection of different Russian PMCs and some that overlap or some that are antecedents of the other. How think about the Moran Security Group and its relationship with the Russian state to include, you referenced earlier that the GRU's role and Russian military intelligence agency's role in some of the oversight in Moran's case. Do we know which government organizations it's sort of overseen by or works with? And as a point of comparison, how does that stack against some of the other Russian PMCs you track and also wrote about and in your book that I referenced?
- [32:12]
Candace Rondeau
Moran Security Group is a really interesting example of an organization that has its roots in a pretty legitimate need that Russia was facing, which is essentially there was extreme levels of risk in the passage of energy resources from Russia from the Black Sea area, from the Baltics through the Red Sea area, particularly around Eastern Africa. You will may or may not remember this depending on how old you are. But of course in the late 1990s, early 2000s, there was a tremendous problem with Somali and Sudanese piracy along the coast, along the Red Sea coast in East Africa to the point where it was just, you know, tankers were being interdicted and boarded and held hostage for transfer of cash for millions of dollars in some cases. And, and Russia, you know, really relies of course on those passageways for transit of its oil and gas and frankly pretty much a lot of its shipping goes through that area because Asia and Africa are such big markets for, for Russia. And So in the 1990s, Moran Security Group was tasked with essentially becoming the, the right hand, the paramilitary right hand of Sovkamplot, which is Russia's state run and state managed shipping company. It is the largest for the country and one of the largest in the world. I think maybe only Maersk, which of course is the, the Danish shipping company might rival it in terms of its size and breadth and, and depth. And so Sofkon float under a law that was passed, a couple different laws that were passed first under Yeltsin and then under Putin that gave state security, state run agencies and companies like Sofkon float like Gazprom, they were given permission to hire essentially their own in house paramilitaries for security. And that's, that's basically the origin story of the Moran Security Group. There are other sort of personnel overlaps that date back to some interesting adventures from the 1990s and early 2000s in Chechnya and Georgia and Transnistria. That's not important. That's a Bit too granular. But what's. What matters is the origin story is really about protecting Russia's big export arm for energy and then secondarily protecting shipments of goods, particularly arms. This is sort of the origin of the Moran Security group. And in 2013, when Russia was starting to dip its toe into trying to bolster the Assad regime in Syria, Moran Security Group experimented with a small contingent that became kind of the progenitor of the Wagner Group and in fact was led by one of the leading commanders, Dmitry Utkin. At the time, technically, Sovkom Float was sort of the overarching administrative body controlling the Marine Security Group with a lot of answering the mail to the fsb, which is kind of the FBI of Russia. And in fact, one of its originators, one of the original company board members was from the fsb, a former KGB guy. So it's, it's always had its roots in the sort of security, secret security services of Russia. I've always sort of felt that actually Wagner was really just Moran in disguise. Those relationships never really changed. We saw sort of talk of Moran Security Group basically disappear the entire time that Yevgeny Prigozhin was in charge. And then suddenly it's. It sort of popped back up again. But nothing ever really changed. It was always registered both in Hong Kong and, and a couple other places in Belize. And some of those shell companies do overlap with the Wagner Group networks that we saw during the Prigozhin's day. So the way to think about Moran is a little bit more like a sort of, you know, a Russian nesting doll, as all of these things are. It's sort of like a shell within a shell. But it has always been the primary vehicle for maritime security services for Russia's state enterprises.
- [36:15]
Justin Sherman
Interesting. And to your point about shells, I know you have some and other scholars. I always like the sort of graphics of the Wagner group and other shell networks, which of course start having many nodes and edges very quickly. Let's segue now to a different region of the world. You referenced it at the top of the episode, which is the African continent and in particular Mali. Much was made. I mean, certainly you've written about this extensively about Wagner's previous role in those areas, Central African Republic, et cetera. What are you studying of late with Russian PMCs and Mali, since you mentioned that earlier in particular. And what are you finding?
- [36:54]
Candace Rondeau
Well, what we've seen in the last month or so, but with acute kind of pulses in the last two weeks, we've seen in Mali, which has been Kind of the shining example, or at least it was meant to be the shining example, of Russia's ability to provide partnered operations in the Sahel, which is a very challenging region for a variety of reasons. Chief among them, of course, is the rise of Islamist extremism and armed Islamist groups like Jenim, which operates in the Sahel and in Mali in particular. And we also have other rebel forces there, the Azawad alliance, which has been critical for Tuareg rebel groups not just inside Mali, but also across the border in places like Algeria and other parts of the Sahel. Mali has had a really difficult time, basically since 2019, since the coup that led to the ascension of Assini Goita, who is kind of the head now of the junta that rules Mali and has been kind of the student or mentee of both American forces, where he underwent counterterrorism training, but also of Russian forces. He also spent some time in Moscow doing officer training. Basically, the junta has deep connections with Moscow for a variety of reasons that are mostly historical, dating back to the Soviet times. And in the last 10 days, we have seen rebel forces associated with Janim and Azawad overrun bases that were occupied by Russian forces, by the Africa Corps. We saw a takedown in Kidal and then a withdrawal, which is kind of this northwest northeastern military base in Mali. And then just yesterday there was another base. So a total of three bases now have more or less collapsed under pressure from rebel forces. And there was a major assault in Bamako that led to the death of Mali's intelligence chief, General Modiba Kone, who was basically, you know, the main conduit for the relationship with Russia in the first place. A lot of targeted operations with an aim of pushing Russia out is kind of what we've seen. And there are a lot of theories as to why Russia finds itself on the. On the back foot. What we have seen in the telegram chatter, you know, on Africa core channels and then sort of these adjacent, you know, right wing militarist channels that Russia has. We've seen a lot of chatter about dissatisfaction within the ranks about the way the Ministry of Defense is running Africa Corps. Last year, there was a sort of mini rebellion in one of the detachments. There were complaints about having to pay for food and also missing pay and missing care for those who are rotating out who had been injured. So there's a lot of, I think, morale issues and a lot of concern about the current sort of structure of the middle management of the command. And I do think that there's also just kind of this Natural tension between Russia needing to have troops both in Ukraine and having them in Africa. One of the other things, of course, that's really important. This will be the last thing I say before we kind of move on, but we know from 2024, when there was an incursion between rebel forces, Malian forces, and Wagner forces in. In Mali that resulted in, I think, about 84 casualties, Russian casualties in that instance. There was some supposition that Ukrainian forces special forces had given training to Azawad Tuareg rebel fighters. And we did see in this most recent confrontation, a lot more drone activity on the rebel side. And it seems like there's a growing sophistication. So I think what we're seeing is kind of maybe three things happening at once that are leading to this kind of deleterious effect. For the. For the Wagner group Africa Corps, one is just this internal dissension, dissatisfaction with the management, low morale is leading to low performance, complaints about, you know, not just food, but also equipment shortages. That's one. Two is a greater sophistication on the part of these rebel forces. They are now much more capable of using drones. So the airspace is not dominated by Russian forces as it once was. When you have helicopters fighting against, you know, swarms of drones for dominance in the airspace, a lot of times in these kinds of environments, it's the drones that win. They can kind of give more capacity to forces on the ground than a single helicopter could do. So that's another piece. And then the last, I would just sort of say, is this really deeper tension over manpower and the need to kind of rotate the more experienced and seasoned forces who might be working in Africa back to the front line in Ukraine. There's a real tension there that we're starting to see play out.
- [42:01]
Justin Sherman
The UAV thing is really, I keep thinking, oh, I can go down that rabbit hole, but I'll try to stay on track here. But the UAV point, that's very compelling as well. Related to all that, then, obviously, as you've said a few times, these entities also, whether report is the right word or not, but have to be accountable to, at a minimum, fair to say, I think, at least one of these Russian security organs. So with all of the developments you just said and what the current state of play is in Mali, how does that sit with the GRU and the Russian government, do you think? And is there any kind of questioning of the utility of continuing that activity, or do you think that's likely to stay pretty on course in the coming months?
- [42:49]
Candace Rondeau
Such an interesting question, and maybe the question to ask is like, what is the blowback effect on the actual command structure of the GRU from some of this fallout in the Sahel? So far, we haven't seen any kind of removal of key individuals. So here I'm pointing to Andrei Aviernov, who is a longtime officer in the Gruff. He's very famous for, at one point, spearheading unit 29155, which was involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. Alexei Navalny has been sort of behind a lot of different sort of sabotage and assassination attempts over the years. And Avieranov is often thought of as kind of the architect of this special Special Activities Services, which is a subunit of the gru. And technically, that is where the management of Africa Corps actually sits, is under the ssa. And it is a curious thing that he has not yet been removed, despite many, many years of what are pretty embarrassing reversals, not just in Africa, but I would also say in parts of Ukraine. And you would also kind of look at the period in which Yevgeny Prigozhin was technically the CEO of the Wagner Group, but in reality was always answering to the masters in the gru, which included Abyernov. Right. And in fact, many people believe that Avyarnov was kind of the mastermind behind Prigozhin's ultimate removal and killing. So kind of a mixed track record on some level, because a lot of the operations that he's run have been outed over time, including sabotage operations in Europe, most importantly. So I think it's sort of wait and see there in terms of whether he will survive. As you know, there have been big purges in the Russian military over the last year. We just saw, for instance, the arrest and charging of Ruslan Tsalikov, who for many, many years was a really important key general and supporter of the Wagner Group operations. Way back in the day, dating back to 2014, 2015, we've seen a lot of people associated with the kind of the Wagner brand and market swept up in this purge. And very recently, just I think in the last week or so, there was a leak of a European Intelligence Agency report about some of these individuals perhaps being the cause of rumors of a potential coup being led by the former Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu. Now, that seems to me a little bit of a stretch. But what is interesting is there is, I think, growing tension within the ranks over the way things are being run on the battlefield in Ukraine, and it has really led to a reshuffling of power within the Ministry of Defense that so far hasn't touched the gru, but maybe could, given the circumstance. And if we see more deterioration on the battlefield in Mali or other places adjacent, like Niger or Burkina Faso, it's very possible that these guys would be next on the chopping block.
- [45:53]
Justin Sherman
That's really interesting. There was one other development at least recently I do want to mention. You had flagged it when we were chatting a little bit before the taping, that there was a legal case filed recently against the forces with the Molly Wagner situation, or Africa Corps situation. You were referring to a case filed in the African Court of Human Rights. What is this case? And do you think it will have an impact on the operations that we're talking about? And if so, what might that look like?
- [46:26]
Candace Rondeau
Well, this case is really emblematic of some of the other challenges I would sort of say I would name. And these are bigger, more strategic challenges. You know, the Wagner Group and Africa Corps, Russian forces more generally in these expeditionary force operations, have gained a reputation for brutality. In fact, that's where sort of the name for my book, Putin's Sledgehammer, really comes from. A very famous incident involving a beating and a beheading of a individual on camera with a sledgehammer by Wagner forces. And this has become kind of like emblematic of the way Russia rolls, basically. It's kind of this idea of, you know, virility and violence and sort of fear and terror. And we've seen that play out in Mali. And so this case that was just recently brought by Trial International and a couple of other human rights groups based in Europe, with cooperation from the Berkeley Human Rights center, that has been very instrumental in doing a lot of collection on Wagner Group operations in Africa. And also I want to name all Eyes on Africa based in France, these, you know, civil society organizations kind of combined forces and decided to lodge a case in the African Court of Human Rights based on a two massacres that actually took place in 2022 involving Malian and Russian forces in a place called Mora and another place called Hamubi. These two interactions resulted in roughly 500 civilian deaths and then untold numbers of injuries and wounded. And much of it was actually caught on camera. Some of the after effects were caught on camera. And Russian forces at the time, sort of Wagner and Prigozhin and friends tried to cast it as a false flag operation by French forces as they were exiting. That, of course, is not the case. There's lots of documentation about the Mora massacre in particular that the UN has raised and others have raised pointing to severe violations of human rights and the international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict. I think what's interesting about the case is this is a time when, of course, the International Criminal Court has suffered some, you know, reputational blows for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is kind of allegations against the prosecutor, chief chief prosecutor, and also is on the back foot because of the U. S. Stance on the ICC vis a vis Israel and Afghanistan. And so there are not very many international venues where you could take this kind of set of violations and accusations against a group like Africa Corps and Wagner. That said, the place to take it is where it's actually happening. Right. And so I think it'll be really interesting to see how this unfolds in the court, and it could be actually an opening for even more cases. As you know, there's been lots of accusations of clandestine operations that have gone off the rails run by Russians in the Central African Republic and in Sudan and also in Libya. And so if the African Court of Human Rights becomes this kind of new venue for moving forward with those kind of cases, it could really change Russia's positioning on the continent.
- [49:27]
Justin Sherman
That is, I'm surprised to get a positive note in here, but I will certainly take it. And that's interesting vis a vis, as you note, obviously, the other many out there documented cases of rights abuses. So, looking forward a little bit, what are one or two things you're tracking right now with Russian PMCs that you find most interesting or that listeners might find most surprising? I don't know, in the next 612 months or so?
- [49:54]
Candace Rondeau
Well, I continue to track the evolution of the effort to use the Wagner Group brand to attract young men to join sabotage operations in Europe. We've seen that kind of turned down in the sense of direct Wagner engagement, although I think that there's plenty of evidence. If we look deeper at the roughly, I don't know, 300 incidents that we know about, I think we would probably find that actually Telegram channels related to the Wagner group figured very prominently in a lot of recruitment drives. And that the GRU and the svr, which is the other sort of secret intelligence agency that's got a lot of purchase over these operations, have become very sophisticated in using, you know, Telegram, in using other platforms, gaming platforms. That's another place. I think that's one area that I continue to watch and monitor, because I do think it's a little bit of a blind spot for Europe, and I think it's certainly a blind spot for the United States. Less so the UK because they've had an incident there that's been very high profile. The other thing I think, obviously, that will be worth watching is will any of these escalating interdictions with the Shadow Fleet result in a kind of clash or a clash of arms between paramilitary forces aligned with the Marine Security Group or former Wagner fighters who are on board some of these tankers? Are we going to see a showdown, Right, or is it going to continue to be contained? What we do know is that the Gruff has been giving pretty explicit instructions to the guys on board. There's been a lot of reporting about that from crew members who have been captured in some of these interdiction efforts. And I think, you know, the more we see aggressive interdiction in places in and around UK and Nordic territorial waters, the more there is a risk of that, I think that we have to be watching and looking closely at. And then last but not least, you know, to what degree have these logistical networks for transfer of sanctioned goods that what was known as the Wagner Group put in place? How much of those actually are actively supporting some of the action that we're seeing in Iran, in the Gulf region? I think we really have to just keep in mind that when we think about the cooperation between Russia and Iran at the state level, you always have to know that there's a shadow level as well, and that bears watching, because I think it will be really transformative. And in some ways, if you can get your oil to market, in the case of Iran or in case of Russia, there's not a lot of incentive for you to start coming to the negotiating table. And I think that's a factor that we need to keep our eye on.
- [52:30]
Justin Sherman
If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow, how would you update U.S. law or policy or strategy to deal with some of these latest evolutions? You mentioned economic warfare earlier. I'm not sure if you have thoughts there, but really, anything you think policymakers should think about vis a vis the Russian PMC ecosystem?
- [52:51]
Candace Rondeau
That's a great question. So if I had a magic wand, there are so many things I would do. But the things that come immediately to mind, first and foremost, you might be aware there's a pending resolution legislation now in Congress called the HARM Act. And this calls for the Department of Defense and other executive branch agencies to take more seriously the problem of Africa Corps to do a little bit more work on intelligence gathering, you know, developing a report on sort of what their activities are, who's doing what, and also monitoring the financial networks that are sort of making things go. I think that's going to be a really important piece of the puzzle. If it can get passed by Congress in the coming year or so, it could be a very valuable tool. I won't say that it's like a perfect tool because it does call for designating the Africa Corps as a especially designated terrorist group. And I don't think that that's quite right. It really is more like a transnational organized crime group. And there's a lot of political reasons why you might want to kind of stay with that label to kind of encourage other partners that are skittish about the American characterization of terrorism to come on board with enforcement. Having said that, I do think the HARM act is one pending legislation that really could be passed and could be viable and could be useful for generating fresh intelligence on how Russia is using Africa as this sanctions evasions market. And that could be very helpful in kind of, again, making sure that your economic warfare policy is actually doing more good than harm. And we can't really know that unless we have a better sense of who the actors are who are benefiting from some of these shadow operations. In the same vein, there is also pending legislation that was forwarded by a Republican congressman, I believe it was Mr. Reich, who proposed expanding intelligence gathering on the shadow fleet in particular. Now the status of that bill seems a little bit murky. It was first, I think, put into play in February of this year, and then it seems like it was sort of struck out, or at least it's been paused, likely because of this concern about the global energy market and sort of getting this, this oil to market. But I would say if you can get those two things, the HARM act and this proposed Shadow fleet monitoring act together, that would be one piece. And then the second is just getting back to the good old fashioned enforcement routine, you know, making sure that if you know that there's a vessel that's been acting in the shadow fleet, that you sanction it. And syncing up with the European Union and the UK is really critical because now it turns out that the EU and the UK are actually speeding ahead with a lot of their vessel sanctions, and the US is way behind. And it's that gap that tends to be exploited by Russia and some of these arbitrage brokers. So you want to close that off. And lastly, I would just say, you know, there is a tremendous room and this is well beyond the US foreign policy. There are a lot of jurisdictions I would name Germany, I would name Finland, Norway, a few others that have the legal grounds to begin looking into the activities of some of these Russian paramilitary companies and to see whether or not there's grounds for war crimes prosecution. We should not forget that just because the Ukrainian war is grinding on, it may someday come to an end, and there is a lot that the Wagner group will have to answer for when that bill comes.
- [56:19]
Justin Sherman
That's all the time we have. Candace, thanks as always for joining us.
- [56:23]
Candace Rondeau
Thanks for having me.
- [56:27]
Justin Sherman
The Lawfare podcast is produced by the Lawfair Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free, you can become a Lawfare material supporter@lawfairmedia.org support supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other podcasts, including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath, and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work@lawfaremedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patya and our audio engineer. This episode was Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thank you for listening.
- [57:24]
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