It’s not just Wagner

At least three Gazprom-linked private military companies now have fighters in Ukraine

Evgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner Group, a private military company, is already infamous for taking on Russia’s Defense Ministry. For several weeks, war bloggers have reported that the war-mongering catering tycoon is now in conflict with several other private military companies who have sent fighters to Ukraine in recent months. BBC News Russian investigated the new groups fighting in Ukraine, and discovered that at least three have links to Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom. The groups evidently emerged from the private security structures Gazprom subsidiaries created to protect its infrastructure projects in Russia and its overseas operations in places like Syria. Meduza is sharing an abridged, English-language report on BBC News Russian’s findings.

Wagner Group isn’t the only private military company (PMC) fighting for the Russian side in Ukraine. A new investigation from BBC News Russian finds that other such groups are most likely linked to Russia’s state oil and gas company, Gazprom. Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin mentioned the other private military companies himself during an interview with the publication in April. The Gazprom-linked PMCs go by the names Fakel (Torch), Potok (Torrent), and Redut (Redoubt).

“People who have money now think that forming a PMC is a great idea, so they’ve started to multiply. There’s the Gazprom PMC, [billionaire Andrey] Bokarev’s PMC, and Redut — one after another,” said the Wagner founder. In the interview, Prigozhin also said that fighters with other PMCs were sent to cover the flanks of the Wagner Group’s advance on Bakhmut. The other groups reportedly had to abandon their positions because of poor training and supplies and a lack of “tactical-level commanders.” Prigozhin added that the founders of the other PMCs “report to the Kremlin” and that their fighters are very well paid.

In early 2023, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin gave permission to Gazpromneft, a subsidiary of Gazprom, to form a “private security organization.” BBC News Russian reports that the organization was started in the city of Omsk, under the name Gazpromneft Security. It was headed by former high-ranking employees of Russia’s Federal Security Service and Internal Affairs Ministry.

There’s no official confirmation that Gazpromneft Security is linked to PMC Potok, notes BBC, but there is some indirect evidence that the two groups are connected. In April, a pro-Kremlin war blogger posted a video on Telegram, showing “fighters from the Potok battalion.” The post said that the PMC in question had been created by Gazprom and was staffed by “departmental security personnel” who had been sent to Bakhmut to take up positions on Wagner Group’s flanks. The men in the video complained about poor leadership and equipment. They said they’d been sent to Ukraine with PMC Redut, which aligns with Prigozhin’s claims.

Between early April and late May, a leaked recording revealed the interrogation of a Russian prisoner of war, who said during the interrogation that Potok was under the command of PMC Redut. In the video, a man who identifies himself as Alexander Tkachenko from Orenburg, said that Gazprom runs two other PMCs, Fakel and Plamya (Flame), and that Russia’s Defense Ministry ultimately controls them.

BBC found Alexander Tkachenko’s profiles on social media, which suggest that he worked for a company called Gazprom Mining Orenburg. The social media pages don’t specify Tkachenko’s role at the company, but based on his answers while under interrogation, he worked with the gas monopoly’s internal security.

PMC Redut, which both Prigozhin and the Potok fighters mentioned, has existed for several years. BBC writes that, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the group worked security for infrastructure projects in Syria run by Stroytransgaz, an oil and gas engineering company controlled by oligarch Gennady Timchenko’s Volga Group. Until recently, Redut was small in comparison to Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, but, writes BBC, a few months ago reports emerged that the group was actively recruiting fighters for combat in Ukraine.

Some pro-war bloggers and journalists have hinted at a connection between Redut and Russia’s Defense Ministry. Alexander Kots, a war correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a pro-Kremlin publication, told BBC that “allegedly, Gazprom created three PMCs: Plamya, Potok, and Fakel. They recruit volunteers and transfer them to the Defense Ministry. I don’t know whether that’s true, and I don’t know what their future is, either.”

Little is known about the scale of Gazprom-related PMC losses, says BBC. The only death among Potok fighters that the Russian authorities have officially recognized is that of Erast Yakovenko, a resident of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic. Journalists established that Yakovlenko was a senior security officer for a branch of the Southern Transregional Security Directorate, a Gazprom organization.

Neither the Defense Ministry nor Gazprom has officially admitted to the existence of PMCs with links to the state gas monopoly, BBC reports.