Insights on Private Military Companies and Ukraine Conflict from Recent News

Understanding Wagner Private Military Company as a modernized 18th-century Freikorps can help us see the drawbacks and possibilities of this organization. During the Seven Years War, grandees or oligarchs used their personal funds to raise military units, or Freikorps, to serve alongside the Prussian army. These units showed greater innovation than other Prussian soldiers and perfected an 18th-century version of combined-arms warfare. Wagner has demonstrated surprisingly flexible tactics that fly in the face of the mercenary or penal battalion stereotype.