Even members of the State Duma Defense Committee disagreed
What should be done with private military companies after the attempted armed rebellion by Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner PMC fighters? There are at least three possible answers. The first is to disperse and ban. The second is to transfer the fighters to a contract with the Ministry of Defense and continue not to play dangerous games with the creation of private armies. Finally, the third scenario is to legalize PMCs and let them work as they did, but according to the law.
The fate of private military companies after Prigozhin's rebellion frankly hangs by a thread. There is no unity in the ranks of parliamentarians. Some propose to leave PMCs alone and simply give them legal status by a separate law. Others are categorically against it.
—The state should have an absolute monopoly on the creation, development and use of the Armed Forces. That is my personal opinion. The army is not a private shop, — said a member of the State Duma Defense Committee, Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev, in an interview with MK.
According to the deputy, any talk about the legalization of private military companies is unacceptable after the attempted armed rebellion, which the creator of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin tried to arrange last Saturday.
Earlier, Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Duma Defense Committee, told reporters that deputies are currently preparing a bill to legalize private military companies. Lieutenant-General Sobolev stressed that he knew nothing about the initiative of his colleagues in the lower chamber. He also did not undertake to comment on the words of the head of the committee, of which he is a member.
At the same time, Sobolev suggested taking the words of Dmitry Peskov as a starting point, who outlined the further fate of the Wagner PMC fighters:
— Peskov said: those fighters who did not take part in the rebellion will be able to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense. Those who accepted will be sent home. Nobody will pursue them.
But to legalize them after the rebellion — well, I don’t know. Everyone remembers the words of Serbian President Vučić that the rebellion was coordinated with the West. How, in this case, to talk about some kind of legalization? And our President Vladimir Putin said that this was a stab in the back and a betrayal,” the deputy said and added that in the end the decision would still remain with the president.
Meanwhile, Wagner is far from the only private military company in Russia. According to media reports, the first PMC was the Shield unit, created in 2008 to protect fuel and energy facilities in Syria. Later it was renamed «Redoubt». There are also PMCs «Patriot», «Hawk», «Potok», PMC «Bokareva», units of BARS, «Tsar's Wolves» of Dmitry Rogozin. With the beginning of the NMD, there was a real boom in private military companies in the country.
—Wagner alone has at least 25,000 fighters, as Prigozhin himself said. Some of them participated in the rebellion, some did not, says Viktor Sobolev.
Let’s make a reservation right away: 25 thousand is an estimate of the number of Wagner personnel according to Prigozhin in one of his voice messages, which he sent out on Telegram before his “march on Moscow”. Whether he had in mind the total number of employees in the company in general, or is it just those who planned to take part in the rebellion, is an open question.
But even if we assume that the Wagnerians can simply be “taken and canceled” for attempting a rebellion , then the rest will still have to decide something. They did not raise a riot.
Here, too, there are at least two options. The first one was previously repeatedly voiced in the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense: before July 1, all volunteer formations (and PMCs are, in fact, exactly what they are, no other design comes to mind) must sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
And if not all will they sign what to do with the rest — to disperse and disarm?
Probably, other formats are still being considered on the sidelines, involving the preservation of private armies.
Thus, Yaroslav Nilov, deputy head of the LDPR Duma faction, in a conversation reminded journalists that the deputies had previously raised the issue of the need to legalize PMCs:
— As for PMCs, we really do not have such a concept in the law, although more than five years ago a number of deputies, including our faction, were in favor of legalizing such a status … Of course, what happened is a certain impulse for in order for any decisions to be made,” Nilov said.
We note that earlier, when the State Duma adopted amendments to the Law “On Veterans” and did not include fighters from private military companies among the recipients of benefits, the reason for this The solution was precisely the lack of legal status of PMCs.
Head of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov sees no reason to ban not only all PMCs in the country, but even Wagner itself:
— Here, after all, all the questions to the head of the PMC. The one who raised the rebellion must answer,” said Kartapolov. In his opinion, the dispersal of PMCs would be «a gift to NATO and the Ukrainians.»
Meanwhile, as TASS reported today, the Wagner centers in Novosibirsk and Tyumen, which were closed since the beginning of the rebellion attempt, resumed work today.