Soldiers in PMCs and Regional Forces Likely to Prove More Loyal to Their Immediate Bosses than to Abstract Russian State, Nevzlin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 11 – The Russian government by promoting the formation and use of “private” military companies and regional forces may be creating its own nemesis because the fighters in them are already more loyal to their immediate bosses than they are to any abstract Russian state, Leonid Nevzlin says.

            Up to now, the interests of the two correspond, the former Russian oligarch who now lives in Israel says, although it is already clear that many in these alternative armies consider the army’s chain of command as full of morons who are “exhausting the troops with senseless maneuvers” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63BE5F1F34F6B).

            But if the interests of these two armed forces diverge as is entirely possible in the event of losses or even stalemate, Nevzlin says, “then the hand that gives the loot,” that is the immediate commanders of this alternative army, “will turn out to be much closer and stronger than the voices of propagandists broadcasting on television.”

            In that event, he concludes, “thousands of trained, equipped and tested mercenaries will go wherever they are sent by those to whom they swore allegiance.” And that will mean that the approaching civil war in Russia won’t be about any reds and whites as was the case a century ago but a struggle among various groups of gangsters.