On February 7-8, Syrian military and Russian mercenaries attacked a base in Deir ez Zor (north-east of Syria), held by Kurdish forces, on which were military advisers from the United States. Although the Russians were well aware of the stay on the basis of the Americans, on the orders of Anton Vaino, the head of the Russian presidential administration, Vladimir Putin, they nevertheless launched an offensive. The United States immediately responded by air strikes, causing serious losses to the Syrian-Russian forces.

The Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, was named after the German composer, whose operas are fond of its founder Dmitry Utkin. It is allegedly tailored according to the pattern of US military companies - such as the Academy of Eric Prince, previously known as "Blackwater".

However, "Wagner" - completely and completely controlled by the Russian state and the armed forces of the Russian Federation, the company is built into the command chain of the GRU - Russian foreign intelligence, and is also controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin. This name is widely known, because Prigogine is one of thirteen Russians, whom special prosecutor Robert Muller accused of interfering in the presidential elections in the US in 2016.

Prigogine is a former criminal, who earned a good salary on fast food shipments. He became rich, became an oligarch and acquired the nickname "Chef of Putin" because of his closeness to the Russian president. It is not surprising that he financed the creation of the Internet Research Agency, which is also mentioned in the conviction of the Russian intervention in the 2016 elections.

But Prigogine is only one of several oligarchs who provided Putin with assets to finance the so-called shadow operations. Konstantin Malofeev, another billionaire, allocated funds for the Russian invasion of the Crimea and the Donbas.

The use of such individuals allows Putin to separate these operations from the official state budget and deny that the state has to do with them. This supposedly new form of war essentially embodies the medieval approach to management.

The rise of people like Prigogine and Malofeev clearly demonstrates the fidelity of the Russian state system and the hereditary Moscow autocracy to the foundations laid in the times of medieval Russia, when the right to private property was relative and depended on how well this or that person serves the tsar.

Prigogine and Malofeev are an excellent illustration of this phenomenon: people recruited from different social classes, or, as the old estates in Russia, the estates, including the criminal layer, become unimaginably rich favorites of the tsar due to their service, abilities and connections.

They operate beyond the capacity of the state system. Their status of Putin's favorites allows you to turn things that, under other circumstances, would get bogged down in bureaucratic red tape or face international complications.

This is another sign of adherence to the traditional mechanisms of tsarist government. Tsars like Putin had absolute, unshakable power, which was and is undeniable by anyone and nothing in the country. At the same time, especially after Peter the First, the kings tried to build a state according to the European pattern and establish rules and restrictions or laws that apply to all the rest. Simultaneously, the kings resorted to the services of favorites and other shadow agents working outside any bureaucratic control, not subject to accepted procedures, which were carried out by tsarist assignments, along the way enriching themselves.

Undoubtedly, Prigogine signed a contract with the Syrian government, according to which he deduced the percentage of income from oil refineries freed from the Islamic state militants, and earned several million dollars. Whatever strategy was behind the February 7 attack, it was somehow associated with a much more prosaic purpose of profit.

In other words, Putin appealed, as he often did, to extralegal and off-system agents. Similar adventurers involved Nicholas II in the Russo-Japanese War, satisfying, along with the fulfillment of the tsar's orders, his own interests.

Of course, the commander of Russian mercenaries in Syria, Colonel Sergei Kim went through the head of the Russian Defense Ministry and the regular army, turning directly to Prigogine and Vaino, that is, Putin. However, when amateurs question the authority of military experts, the results are predictably deplorable.

The attack on Deir ez Zor clearly demonstrates not only the tendency of Putin's regime to turn to favorites, stepping over or bypassing the usual governmental channels of communication, but also the inclination of these very favorites to confuse personal interests with state ones, which leads to a catastrophe. This example opens our eyes to the reality of the numerous military structures in Russia that operate outside the law and are not accountable even to their own state.

The Wagner Group is just one such pseudo-military grouping created under Putin in order to protect his regime from internal instability. And they are rapidly expanding. The Russian energy giant Gazprom, for example, has its own armed forces, while groups like the Internet Research Agency independently conduct shadow reconnaissance and sabotage operations abroad. These groups are able to establish contact with Russian organized crime, as they demonstrated in 2008 during the war with Georgia. The idea of ??civil, not to mention democratic, control over the armed forces in Russia has turned into a farce. This leads not only to destructive consequences, as in the case of Syria, but also is a fertile ground for incredible corruption.

The existence of numerous military factions also testifies to the fact that the state is not able either to rely entirely on the regular army or to afford to support it. Since private operations, like actions of the Wagner group, are sponsored by the state order by those who create them or contract them, oligarchs pay for it out of their own pockets. Thus, they serve the state, even afterwards they receive generous compensation from that very state. Such compensation may be property that they have long sought, or, as in the case of Prigogine, profits from foreign oil.

For international policy, the consequences associated with such operations are extremely important. In Deir ez Zor, Putin gave the go-ahead for the attack, not caring about the consequences. He supposed that the Americans would either swallow it or be defeated.

The same impudence Russia demonstrated by interfering in the US elections in 2016, and this operation was also partially paid by Prigogine. This suggests that the regime, built in the image and likeness of a medieval state, assesses the West as weak and easily susceptible to pressure. What gives grounds to assume: this is far from the last operation of this kind.

Putin's curators at the KGB noted that he had an excessive risk appetite. Prigogine, who was charged with official charges, may temporarily disappear in the shadows, but sooner or later there will appear others who are no different from Putin's whims.

I will tell you, as a military strategist: we received an important warning. And it would be better for us to listen to him.

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