Why are Russian oligarchs forming private armies? - DW News

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3. This isn't an innovation. It's a following of form exercise.

The British empire expanded as it bought into the concept that among its duties and responsibilities was that its military existed to secure the endeavors of its merchant and industrial leaders around the globe. The US essentially followed that example up to the advent of the Vietnam lesson but since, with the exception of some central and south American adventures and the bludgeoning of Iraq, has kept its military useful as a consumer, perpetually upgrading in a manic readiness status, relying on relatively small, special and secret ops units to perform the actual trigger pulling as required. The whole point being that the industries homed within a given nation's borders are usually the primary motivation for investment in a standing military whether private or federally maintained.

Russia's situation is only different in that it is not really a nation at all in any modern sense but the product of an agreement between industrial leaders within the state to support the warlord state leader as may be required. Though, at this point in the disastrous Ukraine invasion it seems their faith in the agreement is strained and they no longer trust the state leadership to provide them with security. Some of them may toss a few troops into the bloodbath as a show of "good faith" with Putin and his organization but they will certainly hold their best as reserves for unpredictable but eventual security challenges. Challenges which may come from the warlord himself as he eats his own in desperation. Challenges which they see darkening the horizon in a coming storm of war's most readily available and undervalued commodity, wholesale misery.