In the west mercenaries are basically a hive of bees you chuck behind enemy lines to sow chaos, and whatever happens happens - deny any and all associations. No paper trails.
But with russia their mercenary group is treated like an ordinary army group - one link on the front line. So what makes them mercenaries? Are they even funding their own weapons? I'd assume they have access to even less financial schemes than the government after worldwide sanctions.
They probably have greater freedom of choice when it comes to weapons, equipment, tactics, and organization.
This being the only real distinction. They are seperate from state army and make their own choices.
They are funded in a different way too. But Russia is way too authoritarian to allow a PMC to work without significant government interference, and many times direct orders.
>freedom of choice when it comes to weapons, equipment
They don't have any kind of freedom in this department. They get what they get. There is no way to procure anything besides small arms in Russia. If they get anything a step above it means that it was generously "donated" to them by the regular army.
>What makes the mercenaries
The ability to deny anything that they do because they are not part of your military.
Also western "Mercenaries" were used to guard specific people/locations and weren't "chucked behind enemy lines"
False. PMCs were regularly used in Iraq and Afghanistan to commit war crimes against civilian populations in areas not controlled by the coalition.
Proofs?
Most “mercs” in Iraq were KBR pajeets that cleaned out the porta potties and make omelettes in the dining facilities.
Random ghost, but, my understanding was that contractors would be paid to "guard" supply lines along the most hostile roads iraq had. So although legally? they could not fight progressively/aggressively to advance territory, by forcing them to drive back-and-forth through enemy territory you could turn a purely defensive troop into an offensive one (like making a supply run to an (en)camp of only like 5 guys, so you can justify sending contractors through an entrenched city between both locations).
That's my general understanding, correct me if I am wrong.
>In the west mercenaries are basically a hive of bees you chuck behind enemy lines to sow chaos, and whatever happens happens - deny any and all associations. No paper trails.
I don't think that's true at all.
>False. PMCs were regularly used in Iraq and Afghanistan to commit war crimes against civilian populations in areas not controlled by the coalition.
Projection, because that's what Wagner was originally contracted to do.
They are more like elite shock troops. Recently read an Ukrainian post about their observed tactics and it looks like the Wagners are pretty much fighting like WWI German stormtroopers with lots of Shmel instead of stick grenades.
From what I hear, 'Wagner' are really very Shmelly.
Underappreciated bilingual pun, have a (you)!
Didn't Blackwater get in hot water for trying to do more than guard duty? Private sector trying to exploit fat government contracts and government solving logistics problems by writing checks seems more plausible than 3rdie vive-la-mort viva-la-guerre merc power fantasies.
For NATO they're a way to plug logistics holes not trench assault troops recruited out of a prison (lmao) with a weird hammer fetish. (Anyone else find the hammer thing weird given the Donetsk Maniacs thing from a couple of decades ago?)
Their observed tactics are for them to be bulletsponges to spot for artillery. That can only be kept up for so long.
Says the side who can't win the artillery duel.
Try not to be too upset.
2nd part
They're armed identically/better than their 'standing' army. It's all a legal smokescreen to get around war crimes. Not that even their actual army gives a frick about warcrimes, but it's a different thing when a 'mercenary group' attacks Western-backed infrastructure and the Russian Army doing it.
>In the west mercenaries are basically a hive of bees you chuck behind enemy lines to sow chaos, and whatever happens happens - deny any and all associations. No paper trails
No? Mercenaries in West are body guards and rear echelon troops.
Russians can not project power military power outside of former Soviet Union, they failed to turn VDV into USMC, so they resorted to creating Wagner as a plausible deniability pseudo-proffesional arm of the Russian Military, which is why Wagner is just a fancy brigade that answers to Pirogin instead of RusArmy brass.
Most importantly, they are off the chain of the regular army bureaucracy
in the right situation, with the right people, this can make wonders
but it rarely scales well back to army size
>pic
Does Wagner have Moldovans?
>In the west mercenaries are basically a hive of bees you chuck behind enemy lines to sow chaos,
Western PMCs are glorified rent-a-cops, moron. Nobody throws them "behind enemy lines".