Mercenaries in the law

Photo: Evgeny Feldman, "New"

The armed conflict in the Donbass, in which different volunteers from different regions of Russia actively participate, gave rise to the idea of ​​correcting part 3 of Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation so that the armed Russians did not fall under the criminal impressed definition of the “mercenary”. Of course, the article is non-working: after 1991, ours where they did not fight-in Africa, in Asia, the Balkans and at different hot spots of the former USSR-and not a single convicted “mercenary”. But this is legal nihilism, it is wrong. And therefore, the mercenaries can soon turn into volunteers. And at the same time it was decided to return to the idea of ​​legislative determination of the status of private military companies (PMCs).

In April 2012, Vladimir Putin, speaking in the Duma, supported the idea of ​​the PMC itself, believing that they were needed "for the realization of national interests abroad without the direct participation of the state." Then everything touched somewhere, as is the case in Russia. Well, now suddenly there was a need for such formations again: there is a hot desire to support pro -Russian forces in Ukraine, there are funds of all sorts of Ukrainian oligarchs from the Yanukovych circle, and you can collect much more from the obedient Russian corporations, even formally attracting funds from the state budget.

Otherwise, billionthic budgets “for Novorossia” may go to incomprehensible armed marginals who are ready to saddle the patriotic wave whipped by state propaganda. So, the country urgently needs reliable PMCs as a legal, but unofficial office of dirty affairs under the control of special services. By the way, there are and are acting in the United States, the Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly accused Washington of fighting the American GREYSTONE PMC in the Donbass, and we have nothing to be insulting.

The hired troops were almost always: Greek hoplites, Roman Auxiliary, Swiss infantry and German Landsknechts. In the twentieth century, the mass armies of conscripts and reservists seemed to have a role of mercenaries to purely decorative: the Swiss guards in the Vatican in multi -colored outfits with the halberds and the last British Army Brigade of the Nepalian Gurkhas with crooked Kukri knives.

Mercenary - a commercial enterprise, which directly depends on market demand and offer - suggests a war, although risky, but without mass losses and torn meat grinders. Therefore, the new heyday for mercenaries (PMCs) began after the end of the Cold War, and by 2012 PMCs of a small specialized niche to the global services of more than $ 100 billion a year grew.

After the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the famous EXECTIVE Outcomes PMC arose, which successfully fought with the rebels in Angola and Sierra Leone under a contract with the central governments, and in addition, was engaged in combat training of soldiers and other rear consulting services. The executive outcomes was served by the former South African specialists from the Aparteid, and they were covered in the air on former Soviet aircraft, as sources in Praetory, the “Russians”. In 1998, Executive Outcomes officially covered, but people remained, and the matter did not die.

After September 11, 2001, the American wars in Afghan and Iraq began, and the flourishing of PMCs was also an unprecedented flowering. The Republican administration of George Bush and personally the chief of the Pentagon Donald Ramsfeld firmly believed that private entrepreneurship is always much more effective than stateburnocracy. PMCs began to receive more and more state contracts of military-protection outsourcing. Simultaneously with the sharply increased solvent demand, the proposal grew - veterans of new wars with fresh experience, who worthy of serving, but did not want to do a civilian business, replenished the rapidly growing ranks of PMCs.

In Russia, instead of full -fledged PMCs, only a lot of all sorts of chokes arose, and the word “outsourcing” after Anatoly Serdyukov in the power block became abusive. In the global market, Russian mercenaries are in demand, but in a rather narrow and specialized sector of maintenance and management of domestic equipment, primarily aviation. This week in Baghdad, for example, were urgently transferred by the AN-124 cargo armored armored boards Su-25, sort of from the Air Force stores, but at a price of new ones, they say that the total transaction amount is almost $ 500 million. Iraqi government troops urgently need air support to stop the Sunni militants of the “Islamic state of Iraq and Levant” (ISIS). Together with the Su-25, Russian specialists instructors arrived in Baghdad, who, according to the official version, should bring cars to combat readiness and leave home in a couple of days, and they say, “experienced Iraqi pilots”, which once under Saddam, flew about twenty years ago. Obviously, Iraqi mechanics should obviously serve cars, which have not seen them either for twenty years either.

It is clear that this is a cover version. Immediately, a couple of weeks after the request, the sale of old Su-25 for the immediate combat use is a typical package transaction, where rockets and other ammunition, as well as pillet instructors and other mercenaries are attached along with the equipment. ISIS will be bombing and storming ours, as it was in previous years in many countries: Angola, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Macedonia, Yemen.

But this will not pass with Novorossia: another war, others are needed by specialists and other cover. Probably, they can really quickly create some kind of domestic PMC, such as “ours”, but with weapons instead of agit-bafer, although for the same purpose, to saw large budgets without the “direct participation of the state”. And let Greystone be strangled with envy.