I think Russia is offering $2,000 a month to soldiers.
For Ukraine they could hire 100,000 mercenaries for 2k a month, that works out to 2.4 billion a year. Ukraine is spending about 100 billion a year on military in between foreign aid and domestic spending.
So is there a reason Russia is hiring foreign mercenaries but Ukraine isn’t?
Well, among other things Russia is (largely, not completely) fighting a WW2 style conflict, where it is grinding away with numbers, and the Ukraine is (largely, again not completely) fighting a more-or-less modern conflict with an emphasis on equipment, training, and tactics.
Mercenaries, or at least the modern mercs, are either very small scale, or aren’t much more good than warm bodies being recruited to make up numbers - low in morale, low in skill, and not to be depended on.
In other words, Russia doesn’t care about the quality of the troops it feeds into a meat grinder, because it’s a small loss. And adding untrained troops to get ground up, would hurt Ukraine’s morale while contributing very little. Why wouldn’t the mercs just cut and run or surrender if it gets (and it is!) bad?
Half formed post sent when my dog hit the post button. Will re-compose my reply in a bit.
That seems a low amount for the risks involved.
I’ve wondered the same question. You’d have to offer Western mercenaries probably 10x or more as much to get them to fight for Ukraine (even $20,000/month would probably be on the low end), but it would still be a small sum in the greater scheme of things. For the over $100 billion that has already been given to Ukraine in some form or other, one would think that an extra billion or two could get Blackwater-type PMCs fighting hard for Ukraine. The risk of death would be higher than any other war but the moral high ground and sense of fighting for a truly undisputably good side could help negate that discouragement. And from a skill standpoint, a Blackwater/Erik Prince-type merc has to be significantly more experienced or better than some Nork or vatnik - or, who knows, the Wagner mercs.
I’m going to guess that it could be that the whole experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has left a bad taste in Western government’s mouths when it comes to private military contractors.
That’s one of the issues. The biggest issue is that “you can’t take it with you when you go”, and in this war the chances of a mercenary being killed are fairly high. This isn’t a fight against the Taliban or ISIS or some other similar opponent. This is a fight against the third or fourth most powerful military in the world. For tht kind of pay, Ukraine isn’t going to convince people from the economically developed world (US, Europe, South Korea, etc.) to sign up, certainly not for 2K per month. And as mentioned, throwing a few thousand or even tens of thousands of guys from third world nations probably won’t be of much help. Of course that’s not even taking into account that word would soon spread that the mercenaries are being used as cannon fodder, and even that supply would dry up. I think at best Ukraine might get a few Syrians that participated in the recent overthrow of the Assad regime, and even then those men would be better used in Syria against any remaining Russian forces there rather than in Ukraine. Other than that, there probably just aren’t any who would be interested.
Why would it be a war crime if PMCs were okay to use in the Middle East?
Right, but I think the OP was suggesting something like Western-earmarked funding, perhaps a combination of money authorized by Congress and private donors.
Yeah, it is basically the NATO equivalent of a tax write-off; transfer X nominal value of obsolescent hardware or expiring mutations, get an equivalent X amount of aid or discounts to purchase modern replacements, which has the added benefit of keeping the Russian military stalled up in Ukraine without any on-the-ground deployments. For Ukraine, this is an existential crisis; for Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, et cetera, this is giving Putin a chew toy to keep him occupied until he exhausts Russian resources.
Stranger
Though early on in this conflict I read of American veterans who volunteered to fight for Ukraine.
There were a few. Of course there were also some that volunteered to fight for Russia. It wouldn’t surprise me if the numbers of both were very small.
The PMCs used by the US in the Middle East were US citizens, and that would be enough to get them out of the Geneva Convention definition of mercenary.
Yes, Ukraine does have international brigades, and the Russians do take the view that those serving in them mercenaries. If they capture them, they sentence them to death on that basis although, as yet, none of those sentences have been carried out.
One answer to the thread title question: Perhaps the money is better spent on robotic fighters.
As explained in this next link, dated today, robots have limitations, but so do mercenaries:
Ukraine’s all robot drone team defends 5-mile stretch against 8,000 Russian soldiers
Also see this two-days-before story from the Kyiv Independent:
For first time, Ukraine attacks Russian positions using solely ground, FPV drones
I had seen these headlines before, without reading the stories. Thanks to all in this thread for making me think of the significance of this possibly major change in the nature of warfare.
9 posts were split to a new topic: Sodokufan Posts in Ukraine Troop shortage thread
‘Legitimate’ private military contractors (PMC) contracted by the US Department of Defense are not hired for ‘front line’ combat roles; they are logistics, security, and support staff. The CIA has used private contractors for decades in extralegal roles for covert operations but these obviously fall outside the Geneva Conventions and other ‘rules of war’ agreements. PMCs fall under particular legal strictures that define what they can and cannot do in the context of recognized conflicts, although given that they typically operate in countries without jurisdictional agreements and extradition treaties with the US or other countries of origin, the degree to which any laws can be enforced upon their activities is limited. Contractors are not generally recognized as ‘prisoners of war’ and thus not accorded the same protections as soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines by parties that recognized such categories.
‘Mercenaries’ are just guns for hire. Although there is no ‘international law’ that enforces a general prohibition against hiring mercenaries, most developed countries prohibit or limit their own citizens from acting as unlicensed contractors, and they may find themselves subject to criminal charges for engaging in unwarranted conflict upon returning to their country of origin. In general, mercenaries are not highly qualified and often have limited if any combat training. Rhodesia was infamous for recruiting foreign mercenaries during the Bush Wars (technically they were enrolled in the Rhodesian Security Forces but they essentially brought their own weapons, paid in bounties instead of salary, and received little if any training, so for all intents and purposes they were ‘soldiers of fortune’) and were noted for being largely inept and poorly motivated.
Stranger
PMCs were, I’d assume, Americans. The international law on the use of mercenaries defines mercenaries as being (among other things) not citizens of a party to the conflict.
It’s the United Nations Mercenary Convention, not the GC.
There most certainly is. Named above.
As no debate framed, moved to In My Humble Opinion.
The United Nations Mercenary Convention (formally the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries) is a treaty that obliges signatories to pass and enforce laws per Articles 5-7, but is not itself a law with any enforceability, even in the International Court of Justice.
Stranger
There are people in prison right now, sent there by the Interntational Criminal Court following trial and conviction, who would find this assertion surprising. Similarly the notion that sovereign states can violate treaties with impunity is contradicted by numerous counter-examples.
Stranger, however, was talking about the International Court of Justice, a different and much older body (which also has no divisions but also arbitrates disputes, decides questions of law and makes ruling that are not without effect).
There are actually (at least) two separate treaties that are relevant here. The UN Mercenary Convention, which Stranger mentioned, dates from 1989 and operates as Stranger outlined. However neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to it. The law governing the status of mercenaries in an armed conflict, however, is found in Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, dating from 1977. Both Russia and Ukraine are parties to it. It’s the Protocol I definition of “mercenary” that is relevant to determining how Russia is required to treat international volunteers serving with the Ukrainian forces, and in particular whether they can treat them as mercenaries.
Seems Ukraine could simply award these mercenaries some sort of temporary Ukraine citizenship to get around the “can’t use non-citizens to fight for you” red tape.