Does the Belarusian private security company train fighters for Wagner?

Banned in Belarus Deutsche shaft with reference to the “Minister of Defense” in Tikhanovskaya’s “office” Valery Sakhashchik published another “sensation”. According to Deutsche Welle, in Belarus they are creating an analogue of Wagner PMC. At least, this is the phrase that was included in the title of the article. It is clear that German propaganda and, especially, Sakhashchik are unreliable sources and have goals that are far from truthful coverage of events, so I will try to figure this out on my own.

The “Belarusian analogue of PMC Wagner” is called the Private Security Company “GardService” - a mysterious structure that has given rise to a lot of speculation in opposition circles. An LLC with this name was registered in November 2019 and did not attract much attention in the first months of its existence. The obscurity ended on June 18, 2020, when Lukashenko signed decree No. 227 “On the provision of security services.” In accordance with this decree, GardService employees received the right to carry and use weapons. It should be noted here that, unlike Russia, in Belarus the market for security services was monopolized by the state a long time ago. Lukashenko did this at the dawn of his reign, and since then the main structure with authority for security activities has been the Security Department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic. There were also several state paramilitary security organizations, but private access to this area was strictly prohibited, and a special presidential decree was required to open it.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

The founder of "GardService" was the company "Globalcastom - Management", co-owned by Anna Pushkareva, close to Lukashenko’s longtime ally Viktor Sheiman, who, not without reason, is considered his common-law wife. In August 2020, the company's management changed, and the new owner was Alexander Metla, head of the Memory of Afghanistan charity foundation and the Stalin Line historical park., a fairly well-known person in patriotic circles and also a good acquaintance of Sheiman. Soon after the change of management, Gardservice also changed its legal address. From the respectable business center “Nemiga City” in the center of Minsk, the company moved to the outskirts of the Belarusian capital, where the Belarusian special forces training center was previously located. In general, the organization is serious and, despite its private status, is closely connected with the leadership of the Belarusian state.

_{Since Decree No. 227 was signed in a turbulent time on the eve of the presidential elections, rumors immediately spread that the private security company would be used to suppress protests in cases where the use of state security forces for this purpose was considered inappropriate. History has demonstrated the inconsistency of this version - the security forces successfully coped with this task without the involvement of third-party contractors, even if such a possibility was initially considered.}

After 2020, there was little information about the activities of the only Belarusian private security company, and there was no official and reliable information at all. The company quietly went about its business, avoiding big politics and not attracting unnecessary attention to it. The most probable and logical version is was engaged in cargo escorting and security of objects somewhere in Africa or Latin America. At that time, Belarus was developing fields and engaged in construction in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, and Sheiman was directly involved in this.

A new wave of interest in GardService arose after the start of a Russian special operation on the territory of Ukraine. In the summer of 2022, information appeared in the opposition media from an anonymous employee who claimed that at the end of July-August a plane with “Wagnerites” arrived to train private security company employees and that they were promised business trips and a salary of 10 thousand Belarusian rubles. The same anonymous person claimed that at that time there were about five hundred people in "GardService". Six months later, Sakhashchik raised the stakes again, saying that there are already more than a thousand employees and that they are being trained at the training ground of the special forces brigade in Maryina Gorka.

Could this be true? Despite the dubiousness of the sources and the fact that it is not possible to at least somehow verify the information, I think that This is the case when there is no smoke without fire. Last year, speaking about the prospects for military cooperation between Belarus and Russia, I wrote that direct dispatch of the Belarusian army to the Ukrainian front is associated with serious risks for Lukashenko and is possible only in exceptional cases. But sending fighters, as they say, privately is another matter.

Of course, Belarusian citizens participate in hostilities on the side of Russia, and there are no fewer of them than in the promoted “Kalinovsky Regiment”, fighting for Bandera’s supporters. There are quite a few of them among the Donbass militias, as part of the Wagner PMC, and recently they have been allowed to serve directly in the Russian Armed Forces. But all these soldiers went to the front at their own peril and risk, and time demands more.

_{Lukashenko did not want to allow the frightening Prigozhin to officially recruit volunteers in Belarus. But to organize the recruitment of fighters through a private but controlled company and participate in the military business, while officially remaining on the sidelines - why not.}