Modeling Patterns of Russian Hybrid Actors

Question: What are the patterns of the Russian kinetic influence strategy when employing the Wagner group?

Background: After the international negative attention following Russia’s conventional military victory over Georgia in 2008, Russia adjusted its strategic toolbox. Instead of relying solely upon a massive defense structure in tandem with energy exports, Russia began leveraging hybrid assets in a series of conflicts within the past five years. Russia specifically has focused on tools that maintain a degree of deniability (as well as influence foreign and domestic populations) in order to gain international clout without risking goodwill. Some of these tools include offensive cyber hackers, military deception and disinformation, and the use of proxy forces. In the same manner that the United States uses Army Special Forces and Civil Affairs to conduct security force assistance and other advising style missions, Russia uses some of its military forces but increasingly private military companies (PMC) to conduct the same set of missions. The most significant of Russian PMCs is the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group is named after the callsign of its leader, Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian military officer. It consists of older Russian military veterans, and includes a significant amount of ethnic Chechens allied with Russian proxy Ramzan Kadyrov. The Wagner Group, like the American military units mentioned above, is deployed to multiple countries around the world ‘contracted’ by those countries to train and fight alongside their forces. However, these countries are all nominal Russian allies, and the ties of the Russian oligarchy suggest strong links between Wagner Group leadership and Russian politicians. It is suggested by many analysts that the Wagner Group is explicitly a Russian military unit, or at the very least is employed by the regime to do its bidding. SNA may provide an ideal tool to visualize such a network, and determine if there is a pattern in employing the Wagner Group.

Hypothesis 1: Russia’s use of the Wagner Group has grown overtime.

Hypothesis 2: Russia uses the Wagner Group in strategically important countries as a means of kinetic influencing.

How to Address with SNA: An SNA approach is an ideal way to identify the patterns because it allows the visual analysis of connections as well as multiple attributes in a clear and understandable pattern (after proper cleaning). A di-modal approach could be used to assess the location patterns in which each individual or group operated. Subgroups and cliques will assess if individuals are in tight groups; centrality measures (specifically betweenness) will show the importance of nodes.

Measures/attributes: The network measure will codify relationships between Wagner and associated individuals and companies, as well as the countries that Wagner and its associates operate. ‘Ties’ are tentatively defined as personal or business connections. The attributes measured will be:

• Time of first connection/founding (measured in 6 month periods starting in 2012)
• Type of individual or group (business, research, etc.)
• Type of actor (individual, company, etc.)
• Sanctions from the US and EU (US, EU, or both)
• Strategic significance (measured as combined score from geographic location, presence of mineral resources, presence of energy resources)
• Region (Africa, Middle East, Europe, Latin America)
• Nominal alliance (binary of Euro-American or Russian)

Data Sources: There is an initial network map of some Wagner associations available through the Foreign Policy Research Institute [1]. However, this map does not appear to measure tie strength, or any attributes beyond actor type.

My plan is to take this map, as well as other open source information, and create a new dataset. Other than the FPRI network diagram, my other sources will primarily be reports from conflict blogs, journals, and trackers such as Small Wars Journal [2]. Many of these forums have detailed sources behind their analysis, which I will have to dig through. Traditional tactical data sets (such as ACLED) provide details about isolated events, however the goal of this particular analysis is to look at macro trends - specifically how Wagner is employed as a tool. Therefore, much of the data scrubbing will additionally be through news articles and academic reports.

Limitations: The biggest issue will be obtaining enough data to indicate tie strength. Russia employs Wagner in scenarios that need to be non-attributable to an extent, so the actions are not extensively covered or discussed. Additionally, Russia is well known for masking and spoofing its actions abroad, so there needs to be inherent vetting while the dataset is finalized.

*I intend to take the second module.

Works Cited:

[1] Alexander Rabin, “Diplomacy and Dividends: Who Really Controls the Wagner Group?,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 4, 2019, https://www.fpri.org/article/2019/10/diplomacy-and-dividends-who-really-controls-the-wagner-group/.

[2] S.A. Cavanaugh, “SWJ Factsheet: Observing Wagner Group - An Open Source Intelligence Study,” Small Wars Journal, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/swj-factsheet-observing-wagner-group-open-source-intelligence-study.