How the Wagner Group Lost Syria

The Wagner Group, a private military company (PMC) funded by the Russian state, deployed to Syria in 2015 and spent six years there. Its role in the country’s conflict was most clearly highlighted by the Battle of Khasham in February 2018, during which a mixed force of Wagnerite mercenaries and Syrian militiamen tried to seize control of an oil field from the US army and its allied militias. The Wagnerites and their allies were badly bruised by a thorough US air and artillery bombardment, and the incident was seen as very puzzling at a time when US-Russian deconflicting arrangements were still fully operational. In fact, the key question about the incident is whether the Russian command in Syria was aware of the Wagnerite plan or not. Wagner’s boss Yevgeny Prigozhin alleged that the Russian command knew, while the latter denied knowledge – hence claims by Prigozhin and his supporters that already at that time a jealous Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) was trying to undermine Wagner.

Prigozhin’s claims can be interpreted as evidence of friction with the MoD, dating back to the early years of the Wagner Group. The narrative that emerges from both Syrian government and Russian government sources indicates, however, that until 2023, things were not so bad. Even after Prigozhin’s mutiny and subsequent death, Russian diplomatic and military sources rated Russia’s experience with mercenaries in Syria as quite positive. Syrian diplomatic, military and oil and gas industry sources were also adamant that the Russian authorities always defended Wagner against Syrian criticism and blocked Syrian attempts to take existing contracts, especially in the oil and gas sector, away from the group. It was only after the mutiny that the Russian authorities lifted their protection of Wagner and converged with the Syrians in terms of getting Wagnerites to leave the company or indeed the country.

Having said this, Syrian sources all agree that they never had the impression that the Russian authorities were involved in Wagner’s expansion beyond the private military business and into oil and gas and related industries. The sources might, of course, have been unaware of Wagner’s arrangements with the Russian authorities, but it seems clear that Prigozhin was not sharing the bulk of his profits with the Kremlin authorities, other than paying some taxes in Russia. Given the shadowy nature of the business, one suspects that the taxes paid were a relatively small amount.

Syrian views of Wagner and its operations in their country are not entirely negative. Wagner’s operations as a commando or shock force were seen as useful, given the shortage of aggressive, combat capable units in the Syrian armed forces and the unwillingness of the Russian MoD to commit regular Russian forces. Syrian businessmen who worked with Prigozhin were also generally happy about the collaboration: the extraordinary profits made by not paying taxes or customs were shared with Syrian business partners, who today describe that time as a bonanza.

For a period, Prigozhin also took care of keeping the political elites happy. The Assad family was rewarded by contracting companies it controls, for example. Over time, however, the jealousy of the Syrian economic and political elite grew, not least because the oil and gas sector is one of only a few ways to make any money in Syria. Prigozhin, perhaps reassured by the protection he enjoyed from the Russian authorities, did not feel he had to distribute Wagner’s profits beyond a narrow number of Syrian business partners and the minister of oil and gas.

The initial justification for Wagner’s entry into the oil and gas sector was of course that it played a key role in reclaiming control over the fields. This legitimised the exceptionally favourable conditions under which Wagner was able to operate them afterwards. By June 2020, however, with the war effectively over, both Syrian powerbrokers, who were not receiving their share, and Syrian officials, who were not seeing any gains for a Syrian state struggling to raise enough revenue to sustain itself, grew critical of Wagner and its privileges.

There is a stark contrast here with the situation that emerged in Mali after Wagner’s 2023 mutiny. In Mali, the Russian government tried to take the contract with the Malian government away from Wagner, but Bamako objected and insisted on keeping Wagner in the country. In the end, a compromise was worked out where 80% of the old contract stayed with Wagner. The Malian government did not want Russian PMC Redut, which is in fact a branch of the MoD, to take over from Wagner. It assessed that Wagner would be a more pliable tool in its hands than Redut.

In Syria, not only did the government not object to the Russian government’s plans to expel Wagner from the country, but it actively endorsed them. As in Mali, however, the government showed little interest in an expansion of the role of Redut (which already operated in the country in parallel with Wagner). The Russian authorities are still trying to ‘sell’ an expanded Redut role to the Syrians, but the lengthy negotiations demonstrate a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the Syrian side, which would rather do without any Russian private military or security involvement in the oil and gas sector.

This seems to suggest that Wagner might only be replaceable by the likes of Redut to a limited extent, because customers do not want the Russian government to have too much say over how mercenaries are used. There are other reasons, too, as to why Wagner is hard to replace. According to senior staff of both Russian and Syrian companies previously operating under Wagner, once the Russian MoD took control of Wagner’s operations in the oil and gas sector, the profitability collapsed. This is not a matter of technical or managerial competence, because the staff have changed little, but of the shadowy business skills that were Prigozhin’s own turf. The Syrian authorities are now demanding that Russian companies in Syria pay taxes and customs.

The paradox of the Wagner modus operandi in Syria was that it worked because of Prigozhin’s ability to break every rule, but it failed for the same reason. Prigozhin’s ‘wild capitalist’ model was always bound to generate resistance, jealousies and criticism. Only by relying on the protection of the Russian state, which had huge leverage over the Syrian elite in 2015–20, could Prigozhin’s system work. Now the question is whether that model – assuming his son Pavel intends to continue with it – can operate autonomously and still turn out a profit.

In Syria, the Prigozhin model was acceptable as long as the situation of extreme crisis allowed for little or no alternatives. Such a situation cannot last forever – it must evolve in one direction or another. Even if the model appears to be still viable for now in Mali and Central Africa, it is clear that by and large Russia was never in a position to offer full, pervasive and long-term protection for Wagner across the geographic range of its operations. Indeed, beyond Syria, the presence of the Russian state alongside Wagner deployments was always much thinner, and typically limited to diplomatic and technical support. This is a key difference between Prigozhin’s business model and that of, say, the British East India Company. Both models are/were driven by extreme rapaciousness, but the East India Company relied on a comparatively much greater ability of the British state to back up the Company’s ‘investments’.

As a result, Prigozhin’s model was only really viable for relatively short burst of very intensive profit making. It might well have been designed with that in mind: in Syria, according to sources within Wagner’s financial operation, the organisation earned a war chest that continues to fund Wagner adventures elsewhere. As a venture capitalist, Prigozhin appears to have assumed that several of his operations would result in losses, but expected a few immensely successful ones to cover that and still leave a hefty profit, which might well have been the case.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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