Private military company in the context of "Megacorporation"

On 30 September 2015, Russia launched a military intervention in Syria after a request by the regime of Bashar al-Assad for military support in its fight against the Syrian opposition and Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian civil war. The intervention began with extensive air strikes across Syria, focused on strongholds of opposition factions such as the Free Syrian Army, the Revolutionary Command Council, and Sunni militant groups comprising the Army of Conquest coalition. In line with the Assad regime's rhetoric, Syrian military chief Ali Abdullah Ayoub depicted Russian airstrikes as part of a general campaign against "terrorism." Russian special operations forces, military advisors and private military contractors like the Wagner Group were also sent to Syria to support the Assad regime, which was on the verge of collapse. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement had included diplomatic support for Assad and billions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment for the Syrian Armed Forces. In December 2017, the Russian government announced that its troops would be deployed to Syria permanently.

At the onset of the intervention, the Syrian government controlled only 26% of Syrian territory. Although Russia initially portrayed its intervention as a "war against terrorism" solely targeting the Islamic State, Russia employed scorched-earth methods against civilian areas and Syrian opposition strongholds opposed to IS and Al-Qaeda. Weeks after the intervention began, Russian officials disclosed that President Vladimir Putin's chief objectives were maintaining the allied Ba'athist government in Damascus and capturing territories from American-backed Free Syrian militias, with a broader geo-political objective of rolling back U.S. influence. In a televised interview in October 2015, Putin said that the military operation had been thoroughly prepared in advance. He defined Russia's goal in Syria as "stabilising the legitimate power in Syria and creating the conditions for political compromise". In 2016 alone, more than 80% of Russian aerial attacks targeted opposition militias fighting the Islamic State. Despite Russia's extensive bombing of opposition strongholds, the territory under the Assad regime's actual control shrank from 26% of Syria in 2015 to 17% in early 2017.

In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use violence to achieve their goals.

VNSAs vary widely in their goals, size, and methods. They may include narcotics cartels, popular liberation movements, religious and ideological organizations, corporations (e.g. private military contractors), self-defence militia, and paramilitary groups established by state governments to further their interests.

Freikorps (German: [ˈfʁaɪˌkoːɐ̯], "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European paramilitary volunteer units that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively served as mercenaries or private military companies, regardless of their own nationality. In German-speaking countries, the first so-called Freikorps ("free regiments", Freie Regimenter) were formed in the 18th century from native volunteers, enemy renegades, and deserters. These sometimes exotically equipped units served as infantry and cavalry (or, more rarely, as artillery); sometimes in just company strength and sometimes in formations of up to several thousand strong. There were also various mixed formations or legions. The Prussian von Kleist Freikorps included infantry, jäger, dragoons and hussars. The French Volontaires de Saxe combined uhlans and dragoons.

In the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of 1918–19, Freikorps, consisting partially of World War I veterans, were raised as paramilitary militias. They were ostensibly mustered to fight on behalf of the government against the German communists attempting to overthrow the Weimar Republic. However, many Freikorps also largely despised the Republic and were involved in assassinations of its supporters, later aiding the Nazis in their rise to power.

The Wagner Group (Russian: Группа Вагнера, romanized: Gruppa Vagnera), officially known as PMC Wagner (ЧВК «Вагнер», ChVK "Vagner"), is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) that was controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and since then by Pavel Prigozhin. The Wagner Group has used infrastructure of the Russian Armed Forces. Evidence suggests that Wagner has been used as a proxy by the Russian government, allowing it to have plausible deniability for military operations abroad, and hiding the true casualties of Russia's foreign interventions.

The group emerged during the war in Donbas, where it helped Russian separatist forces in Ukraine from 2014 to 2015. Wagner played a significant role in the later full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which it recruited Russian prison inmates for frontline combat. By the end of 2022, its strength in Ukraine had grown from 1,000 to between 20,000 and 50,000. It was reportedly Russia's main assault force in the Battle of Bakhmut. Wagner has also supported regimes friendly with Russia, including in the civil wars in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali. In Africa, it has offered regimes security in exchange for the transfer of diamond- and gold-mining contracts to Russian companies. Some Wagner members, including its alleged co-founder Dmitry Utkin, have been linked to the far-right, and the unit has been accused of war crimes including murder, torture, rape and robbery of civilians, as well as torturing and killing accused deserters.

The Sierra Leonean Civil War (1991–2002) was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted almost 11 years, and had over 50,000, up to 70,000, casualties in total; an estimated 2.5 million people were displaced during the conflict, and widespread atrocities occurred.

During the first year of the war, the RUF took control of large swathes of territory in eastern and southern Sierra Leone, which were rich in alluvial diamonds. The government's ineffective response to the RUF and the disruption in government diamond production precipitated a military coup d'état in April 1992, organized by the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). By the end of 1993, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) had succeeded in pushing the RUF rebels back to the Liberian border, but the RUF recovered and fighting continued. In March 1995, Executive Outcomes (EO), a South Africa-based private military company, was hired to repel the RUF. Sierra Leone installed an elected civilian government in March 1996, and the retreating RUF signed the Abidjan Peace Accord. Under UN pressure, the government terminated its contract with EO before the accord could be implemented, and hostilities recommenced.