Lawfare Daily: Russian PMCs Update with Candace Rondeaux

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Thanks for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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. It's the Laugh Fair podcast. I'm Justin Sherman, contributing editor at Laugh Fair

and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies with Candice Rondo. Founder and Principal of Frontline Atlas and Independent Geopolitical Risk Hub. And a professor with the future security initiative at Arizona State University.

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 it.

“Today, we're talking about the current state”

of Russian private military companies. They're 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 Sled Chamber. And among other things, what had happened to you, you've got any progression in 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?

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 Yavgeny Pagoshin, 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, and playing 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 arms length arrangement with Pagoshin. 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 Bachmut, really hard battlefield situations. And they did 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 corps largely is overseen by Raskvadiya, the National Guard of Russia. And that's sort of a reflection of an age-old relationship with Putin in the head of the National Guard at the time. There is a third branch that was streamed into Belarus.

And 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

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 Belarus perspective, maybe not necessarily from a Russian perspective.

And then the third branch is the one that I think

is the one that every understands 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 this hall, particularly in Molly, 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 the purpose of providing partnered operations with Russian client states in Africa.

So that's Bikina Faso, Niger, Molly, to a lesser extent

at various points that had been Sudan, Central African Republic, there has been some expansion of the Africa Corps footprint over the last year into places like Togo and Guinea. This is a reflection in some ways of Russia's capacity

for expansion of its oil and energy infrastructure in the region, particularly for gas prom, which has long coveted some of the offshore opportunities for oil and gas in the region. And so we've seen Africa Corps express its wings,

but at the same time, we've also seen Africa Corps take a lot of heavy hits on the battlefield. Well, thank you for that, and as you know, we often hear about Africa Corps, and I'm thinking of new stories as well that probably are a little bit conflating

that with all of what Wagner turned into. So we'll take more into that in a minute. But why don't we start? You mentioned several countries in a sort of one ago by area of operations before we get in this

and 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? So now those forces technically fall under the management still of the Ministry of Defense,

but under a hub called Reduce, which means basically

Fort or Fortress. And Reduce is really a predecessor of what we know as the Wagner group. It had a kind of competitor named Moran Security Group. And Reduce is run by a guy named Constantine Marseille Ants.

And some legacy commanders, like a guy named Anton Troshev, 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 everybody from North Koreans to Africans from Kenya and South Africa over the last year. So you have a situation where Reduce, 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 Core. And the challenge is, you might sign up for Africa Core 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 debt's dissolved. And that's a big deal, in a place where unemployment and high credit risk is actually a pretty rampant. So anyway, this young man joined up for what he thought was going

to be an IT position with the Africa Core, but ends 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 and Ukraine, and then in this sort of this rear guard action in Africa,

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.”

- Yeah, I want to get to that in a moment, just because you mentioned it, have the PMCs been playing a role in that recruitment pipeline from other areas, I mean, maybe in Russia too, but beyond Russia too, the Ukrainian front?

- Well, it's interesting. So one of the other offshoots of the Wagner sort of break up in 2023 is an organization called the Wagner Group Istra. And this is, I kind of think of it 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 to 2024 period. Many of them came back, they 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 the really 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 I also online is also, you know, on the contact yet, used to be on telegram before it was banned. Groups like Wagner Group Istra and commanders who sort of obtained a certain notoriety for their flexing on the battlefield were a really important advertisement

for getting new recruits. - Interesting, and you mentioned telegram. I have been wondering the past a few days about that impacting recruitment and other things, but 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 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, listening around the world. And Candice and your answer, of course, feel free to modify 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 their vis-a-vis the PMCs. - 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 been as well. Russia, interestingly, has become less of a focus.

And there's somecillary 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, and there's not actually these days a really big shipbuilding market for these tankers 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 will fly under flags of convenience, often from Africa and other sort of smaller states, like seashells 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 list at market, where they are kind of benefiting from the arbitrage between different sanctions regimes that have been adopted by the United States, by the EU, the UK.

In the prior days, there was a lot more alignment across the G7 block in terms of, you know, sanctioning vessels and sanctioning maritime service providers that were involved in moving Russian oil to market. Now, days, 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've been seeing and what we,

not surprisingly, was there were a lot of reports last year from primarily the EU that introductions of shadow fleet vessels

“of 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 super new marries, as they're called,

were basically put on board to do overwatch

of the vessels transit, but also overwatch of the actual crew and also to prevent potential boarding and introduction, because, of course, we've seen in the last year or so, a lot more aggressive tack in terms of introduction and intervention into shadow fleet operations,

not just from the EU, but also from the US and we've seen a few boardings. And since I've seen, for instance, the French captured vessel, the Bora K, as it was entering French waters,

and they found a couple of guys on board who worked for the marine security group, which is really the kind of the granddaddy along with Reduce of Russian paramilitary actors. In fact, the Wagner group really grew out of a contingent

a sub contingent of the marine security group

way back in the day in early 2010 and '11 and '12. And it was the marine security group that really gave birth to, at the time, in early 2000s, this kind of counter-piracy effort on behalf of Russia's big oil producers,

like Ross Neffton, 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 the particular super-new marries. 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 are the Eagle S in Finland, which was caught in Finnish territory waters, that was accused of severing a subsea internet cable. And of course, onboard were Russian paramilitaries.

And so there's this idea now, particularly a deep concern inside of the EU and the UK, that the shadow fleet is doubling not only as the means of getting oiled market, but also as surveillance and sabotage.

And this is really challenging, of course, because the Atlantic 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 a force, but certainly an escalation of military presence in response to the shadow fleet, that's a bit troubling. - 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 editorial. - I swear, for 10 seconds, as you said, the cable cuts is interesting as well. Right another example of, you know,

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, at least personally,

sort of roll my eyes in some of the industry folks who say, "Oh, there's no way this could be anything "but an accident." But many event, this is a great point you make

“that I think maybe we'll apply to the next region”

I want to talk about, which is, do you see any connections between the collection of activity or discussing with the shadow fleet with PMCs? And what's happening right now, vis-a-vis the U.S. Israel and Iran, as well as the straight,

is there any touch point there to include with Russian or other kinds of oil, or are you not seeing anything right now that sort of indicates any nexus with the Russian PMC ecosystem? 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 we kind of call them high risk because of their behaviors. So they had a pattern of turning off their AIS signals,

which is kind of the beacon that serves as their position shows where their position is when they're in group to some place. We looked at whether or not they also were reported who have had paramilitaries on board,

so PMCs, like Moran Security Group on board, or former Wagner soldiers, we checked the names of some

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 different estimations to how many shadow fleet tankers are out there. I've seen as high as 3300 from the Ukrainians' horses. 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 goods force and some of the shell companies that Iran has used to support transport of its oil

and naphthe 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 tanker called the Bella 1, and that was chased by U.S. forces out of the Caribbean

waters as part of the introduction in Venezuela, and it was pursued all the way up to the edge

of Iceland and Scotland, and finally it was bordered.

It turns out, and along the way, it changed its flag from a Gainese flag and pulled that down and then painted allegedly painted a Russian flag on its side. And it changed its classification, changed 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 introduction was unfolding. It was a pretty dramatic U.S. special forces and Coast Guard forces bordered.

There was some assistance from the U.K. military. All of that was super interesting, but what was more interesting is we kind of looked deeper, was, in fact, of course, links to a particular broker named Baranski and another one named Shore.

These two gentlemen are kind of Russian businessmen,

“it's the best way to put it, who have been very active”

in the support of a digital currency firm that has backing from a sanctioned Russian bank, called Promsios 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 why, why would it be that the Russians would have this kind of overlap? And of course, we looked deeper, and we found that actually within this network,

they were at least 28 ships that really seemed 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 state of Hormuz has really produced over the last couple months. And what we saw up was millions of barrels delivered by the 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 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 released 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 straits or from wherever they were deployed

in the Baltics or in Asia, and then moving over to China for delivery in India has been a boon for Russia on the order of billions. - Well, 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.

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 first found that?”

- 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 20, but I think the bigger surprise, not from 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 in Iran understand that the partnership between the two has become more and more integrated over time, we see that in all kinds of levels, we 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 in 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 and overlap in almost an alternative market

for getting energy to and from production sites to refineries in primarily in Asia and 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 can be a competitor to the dollar. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries in the United States and so on. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries

in the United States and so on. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries in the United States and so on. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries in the United States and so on.

So you've mentioned the collection of different countries in the United States and so on. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries in the United States and so on. So you've mentioned the collection of different countries

in the United States and so on. You've mentioned the collection of different Russian PMCs and some that overlap or some that are antecedents of the other. How should we think about the Iran security group and its relationship with the Russian state

to include you referenced earlier that the GRU's role and Russian military intelligence agencies role and some of the oversight in Iran's case do we know which government organizations it's sort of overseen by our work swift

and as a point of comparison, how does that stack against some of the other Russian PMCs you track

“and also wrote about in your book that I referenced?”

- Iran 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 be, 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 tankers were being contradicted and boarded and held hostage for transfer of cash for millions of dollars in some cases.

And Russia really relies, of course, on those passageways for transit of its oil and gas. And frankly, pretty much a lot of it's shipping goes through that area because Asia and Africa

And so in 1990s, Moran security group was tasked with essentially

“becoming the, the right hand, the paramilitary right hand”

of Sofcomplot, 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 Mariske, which, of course,

is the Danish shipping company might rival it in terms of its size and breadth and depth. And so Sofcomplot under a law that was passed, a couple different laws that were passed, first under Yeltson and then under Putin,

that gave state security, the state run agencies and companies like Sofcomplot, 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 personnel overlaps that date back to some interesting adventures from the 1990s and early 2000s in Chechnya in Georgia and Transnistria. That's not important, that's too granular,

“but 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, it was led by one of the leading commanders to meet Putin.

At the time, technically Sofcomplot was sort of the overarching administrative body controlling the Moran 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, former KGB guy.

So 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 you've been getting pre-grozen was in charge.

And then suddenly, it sort of popped back up again. But nothing ever really changed. It was always registered, both in Hong Kong 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 pre-grozen stay. So the way to think about Moran is a little bit more like a sort of a Russian nesting doll, as all of these things are 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. 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 in a particular molly. 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 molly, since you mentioned that earlier in particular? And what are you finding?

- 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 molly, which has been kind of the shining example, or at least it was meant to be a shining example of Russia's ability

to provide partnered operations in the Sahal, which is a very challenging region for a variety of reasons. Chief among them, of course, is the rise of Islamism. Extremism and armed Islamist groups like Janim, which operates in the Sahal and in molly in particular.

And we also have other rebel forces there,

the Azawad Alliance, which has been critical for

twareg rebel groups, not just inside molly, but also across the border in places like Algeria and other parts of the Sahal. Molly has had a really difficult time, basically since 2019, since the coup

that led to the ascension of Asine Gwaita, who was kind of the head now of the hunt of that rules molly. And it has been kind of the student or mentee of both American forces that where he underwent counterism training, but also of Russian forces.

He also spent some time in Moscow doing officer training basically.

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 molly.

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 Bhamako that led to the death of molly's intelligence chief,

General Modiba Konei, who was basically 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 back foot.

What we have seen in the Telegram chatter on Africa Corps channels and then these adjacent 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 sort of mini rebellion in one of the detachments that were complaints about having to pay for food and also missing pay and missing care for those who were rotating out

who had been injured.

“So there's a lot of, I think, morale issues”

and a lot of concern about the current structure

of the middle management of the command. And I do think that there's also just kind of this natural tension between Russia and 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, molly enforcers and Wagner forces in molly that resulted in, I think, about 84 casualties, Russian casualties.

And in that instance, there was some supposition that Ukrainian forces, special forces, had given training to Osawaad, Twarig 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 Wagner group, Africa Corps. One is just this internal dissension, dissatisfaction with the management, low morale

is leading to low performance, complaints about, not just food, but also equipment shortages. And 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 forms 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 that 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 in the need

to kind of rotate the more experienced in season 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.

- The UAV thing is really, I keep thinking, 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 said a few times,

these entities also, whether report is the right word or not, but have to be accountable to 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? - 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 Andre of Yernov, who is a long time officer in the GRU.

He's very famous for at one point spearheading Unit 29155, which was involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skrippel,

a lot of different sort of sabotage

“and assassination attempts over the years.”

And Avirnov is often thought of as kind of the architect of this special activity services, which is a subunit of the GRU. And technically, that is where the management of Africa Core 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 I, you know, you would also kind of look at the period

in which you have getting pergosion was technically the CEO of the Wagner Group and reality

was always answering to the masters in the GRU,

which included Avirnov, right? And in fact, many people believe that Avirnov was kind of the mastermind defined behind precautions, 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 waiting to 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 Salakhov, 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 Wagner brand in 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, a Sergei Shoygou. 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 resuffling”

of power within the Ministry of Defense, that so far hasn't touched the GRIU, 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. - 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 Mali 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? - Well, this case is really emblematic of some of the other challenges I would sort of say,

I would name, and these are bigger and 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 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 a trial international and a couple of other human rights

groups based in Europe with cooperation from the book 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 combine forces and decided to log in the African Court of Human Rights based on a two massacres that actually took place in 2022 involving Mali and Anne

Russian forces in a place called Mora and another place called Hummovi. 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, the after effects were caught on camera and Russian forces at the time sort of Wagner and progression in France 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 masquerade, masquerade in particular that the UN has raised and others have raised pointing to severe violations of human rights and the international humanitarian law,

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 prosecutor and also is on the back foot because of the US stance

on the ICC, vis-à-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-Coron 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 Libya. And so if the African Court of Human Rights becomes this kind of new venue from moving forward with those kind of cases, it could really change

Russia's positioning on the continent. - That is, I'm surprised to get a positive note in here, but I will certainly take it and that's interesting, vis-à-vis, as you note, obviously the other many out there documented cases

of rights abuses. So looking forward a little bit, what are, you know, 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 six, 12 months or so. - Well, I continue to track the evolution of the effort to kind of use the Wagner Group brand to attract young men to join sabotage operations in Europe. We've seen that kind of turn down in sense

“of direct Wagner engagement, although I think”

that there's plenty of evidence if we'd look deeper at the roughly, I 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 telegram and using other platforms,

gaming platforms, that's another place. I think that's one area that I continue to watch a 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 than UK

because they've had an incident there that's been very high profile. The other thing I think, obviously, that we'll be worth watching is, will any of these escalating introductions with the shadow fleet result in a kind of clash

or a clash of arms between paramilitary forces allied with the Marin 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 GRU 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 sanction goods that what was known as a 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, 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. If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow, how would you update US law or policy or strategy

to deal with some of these latest evolutions? You mentioned economic warfare earlier, I'm not sure if you've thought so there. But really anything, you think policymakers should think about vis-a-vis the Russian PMC ecosystem?

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 where

there's a pending resolution legislation now in Congress, called the harm act. And this calls for the Department of Defense and other executive brands agencies to take more seriously the problem of Africa Core,

to do a little bit more work on intelligence gathering, developing a report on what their activities are,

that are 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 Core 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.

It could be useful for generating fresh intelligence on how Russia is using Africa as this sanctions evasion market. And that could be very helpful and 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. Reesh, who proposed”

expanding intelligence gathering on the shadow free 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

at least it's been paused likely because of this concern about the global energy market and sort of getting this oiled 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 fashion enforcement routine. Making sure that if you know that there's a vessel that's been acting in the shadow fleet, that you sanction it.

And sinking 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, 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 due. That's all the time we have.

Candace, thanks as always for joining us.

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