In Moscow, there was a presentation of the book ‘Blackwater’ by American journalist Jeremy Skeyhill. The title is the name of the largest private military company to profit from participation in armed conflicts, which has become synonymous with the killing of civilians in countries where there are conflicts, and the inability of the military to control the industry.
As stated by the head of the investigative journalism group of the ria.ru Joint Directorate, Veronica Krasheninnikova, "We did not even translate this name, because the name has become a сommon noun in the political world. Private military companies have existed for a long time, but the US campaign in South Asia and the Middle East since 2001 has become a real boom for the private military industry. The state is losing its monopoly on the use of force, although this monopoly is one of the main characteristics of a modern state, which is providing internal and external security to a large extent.The privatization of these state functions in the case of America revealed a mass of risks and problems. In particular, it showed that the state is not able to control this industry."
"Private military companies, their non-governmental, private character, is like an advantage, because in this way near-state forces may be involved in military conflicts, to fulfill the interests of the state while the state doesn't seem to be involved in this. But when it comes to the fact that the interests of these private military companies, their owners, are in conflict with the interests of the state, here we get a full range of all sorts of problems. Even America, with an enormous amount of legislation, with all its checks and balances, cannot solve this problem. Despite all the hearings in Congress, despite all the journalistic investigations, the problem of private military companies remains," Krasheninnikova believes.
According to her, "BlackWater is now called the Academy, and appears in Ukraine. On the other hand, Ukraine also provides us with the results of their experiments with private military companies. They are simply punitive battalions – Azov, Aydar – which theoretically fits the description of PMCs. And in the case of Ukraine, we can observe an additional set of problems, which are associated with the peculiarities of our post-Soviet space."
