Hybrid activity of private military companies and its economic influence on Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian war

Abstract

In this article the author is looking into the phenomenon of private military companies (PMC) as one of the key instruments in russian hybrid war against Ukraine. In this paper it is shown how from the moment of full scale invasion in 2014 PMCs were functioning not only as an irregular military but also played a role of an agent in the economy by sabotaging the economic security of the state. Special attention in the analysis was given to the events of 2022 - 2023 when PMCs, specifically “Wagner Group”, became an important component of the invasion of the Ukrainian territories and at the same time – a tool in exploiting the economy of the occupied regions.

On the examples of the occupied cities such as Mariupol, Melitopol, Kherson area, and Zaporizhia region the author of the article exposes the schemes such as demolishing of the industrial facilities like “Azovstal Iron and Steel Works”, illegal exporting of the wheat and agricultural equipment, seizing of the factories and using those in a shadow economy operations. It has been proven that PMCs’ responsibilities were not only the military operations themselves but there were also clear tendencies of economic ones: they were redistributing property, securing the logistics and controlling the strategic branches of the economy.

The scientific research of such Ukrainian and foreign authors as Horbulin, Zinchenko, Hluschenko, Malkin, Hoffman, Brzezinski was analyzed which helped to integrate the military, economic and legal components of those issues. It was determined that PMCs are being turned into a universal weapon of hybrid warfare that combines power and economic mechanisms of influence by using international law weaknesses and informational possibilities.

It is highlighted in the conclusions that Ukraine became a testing ground for the new methods of economic expansion through PMCs. The loss of the industrial potential, agriculture branch and logistic infrastructure tells us that there is a systematic committing of economic crimes that are being executed under the cover of private military companies. Forming an integral strategy of countermeasures is suggested in this work as a necessity, that includes military, economic and international law mechanisms and also to create the cooperation with international partners in order to be able to make global tools for PMCs control.