Not really. All the ammo manufacturers in Russia are state owned or state controlled. They can’t import from the few other countries that would sell to them without Russian import permits. I’m not sure how Wagner’s finances work either. Who is funding them? Military operations cost a lot of money.
Think of it in the US. If you wanted to buy artillery ammunition without state approval, you couldn’t.
The Uruk-Hai perhaps?
There is a family resemblance.
Stuff like this is why I think the recent drone in Moscow was from Wagner.
This peaked my curiosity so I looked up how that works in the US. It looks like you need a Tax Stamp from the ATF for the artillery piece then a separate tax stamp for each shell (destructive device).
So yes, you too can own and fire a howitzer provided you’re the right kind of people (rich).
Putin is resorting to mercenaries and extremely violent criminals released from prison specifically to fight his war for Ukraine’s oilfields, and most of them are dying for him. This monster is standing up to him, so he’s most likely going to “fall out of a window”.
There was a terrifying piece in the Guardian about Wagner thugs who were recruited from Russian prisons and promised pardons if they served their term of service - they’re going home and continuing their atrocities in their communities:
They’re looting resources in North and Central Africa:
They are volunteers AND mercenaries? How does that work?
Seconded on all counts.
He had THIS to say about a video of a sledgehammer killing by his forces:
I with this ghoul and his goons nothing but the worst.
I am reminded of Machiavelli’s commentary on mercenaries:
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.
…
I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/machiavelli/works/prince/ch12.htm
The rest is worth reading as well. Back in high school, I had my boy scout patrol read some excerpts on leadership, whether related or not the next three senior patrol leaders (the youth figurehead of the troop) all came from my patrol. Like Rand, read cautiously and keep your own morals and ethics on the light side of the farce.
Russians do seem to gravitate to the Warhammer Orks aesthetic. I half expect them to be shouting “Waaaagh!” as they rush to a grisly doom, all rough edges and DGAF half-assed gear.
This could be a translation error. Probably more like they volunteered for a sizable paycheck.
I’d tend to defer to Prigozhin’s judgement when it comes to doing brinksmanship with dangerous people, since my own is very limited indeed; but it seems gutsy to threaten to stop being useful when what you do is illegal-but-(barely)informally-tolerated; and it’s the feds, rather than you, who are actually the ones who can fulfill the promises to call prison sentences settled in exchange for service which a fair number of your people probably find more compelling than whatever you are paying them.
It would be interesting to know how Wagner, as an organization, would respond to pressure. I’d assume that the core around Prigozhin is marked by some level of coup-proofing and emphasis on reliable loyalists(since, even if they remained on good terms with the feds it’s unclear that they care exactly which of their deniable assets is at the top of the officially nonexistent org chart, or would much mind if one of their lieutenants decided to arrange a promotion for himself, so long as he remained obedient to the real boss); but the more recently constituted cannon fodder units seem much less likely to have any particular institutional loyalty.
Aside from potentially being made an example of in order to send a message, rather that because of its direct military utility, is the loyalist core sufficiently strong and hard to crack that they present an incentive to keep Prigozhin around because they’ll refuse to fight for his replacement? Would they be more or less OK with him falling out a window, so long as his successor preserved whatever prerogatives motivated them before? Have they suffered enough attrition, vs. the more recently formulated units, that that wouldn’t be a significant consideration and the feds would be more likely to just try to ensure that it’s their barrier troops rather than Wagner’s barrier troops ‘encouraging’ the meat units to move in the correct direction and call it good?
Or volunteer to get out of prison.
I suspect that the situation is complicated by the fact that Putin was more mercenary captain than prince in the relationship until he made the profound mistake of promoting Ukraine from ‘opportunistic foreign meddling’ to ‘bet the regime on it’ and suddenly became the prince in the relationship.
If anything he’s probably pretty familiar with the vices of mercenaries that Machiavelli describes; because they range from being acceptable tradeoffs for low cost and deniability, to being actively useful, to being design goals so long as the mercenaries in question are off in Sudan, or the CAR, or Syria; and you are playing condottieri to someone else’s prince.
He doesn’t jump out windows. He makes other people jump.
Yup. $200 each. A full load on an M32A1 rotary grenade launcher is $1600 for just the tax stamps involved. ($1400 for the ammo, and another $200 for the launcher)
At least it’s not as expensive as firing ‘Sasha’ for 12 seconds.
So, yes, an artillery shell, and a Howitzer, are NFA-regulated destructive devices. State law permitting, someone could file all the paperwork and pay fees and legally possess them.
In fact there are a tiny number of privately owned Howitzers in the US. There’s a category for this type of thing on Gunbroker. I just looked, no one is offering a Howitzer right now but there is a WWII German 5cm mortar for sale, fully operational they claim.
General Dynamics has a handy website describing their great 105mm options. Legally they could sell these to private individuals who got the right NFA paperwork and fees. In reality, they won’t. They have no reason to sell them to individuals, plus lots of liability, plus they just won’t do it.
Russia has its own set of laws but the same situation. No one can buy artillery shells there without the approval of their arms regulators who ultimately answer to Putin.
