JAKARTA - The Russian military's failure to seize the Ukrainian capital is inevitable because in previous years they had never directly faced a strong enemy, according to former Kremlin-linked Wagner Group mercenaries who fought alongside the Russian army.
Marat Gabidullin took part in the Wagner Group mission on behalf of the Kremlin in Syria and in the previous conflict in Ukraine, before deciding to go public with his experiences inside a secretive private military company.
He quit Wagner's group in 2019, but months before Russia launched its invasion on February 24, Gabidullin, 55, said he received a call from a recruiter inviting him to return to fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.
He refused, partly because, he said, he knew the Russian troops were incapable of the job, despite their shouting arsenal of new weapons. Including their success in Syria where they helped President Bashar al-Assad defeat an armed insurgency.
"They were really shocked that the Ukrainian army fought back so hard and that they were facing a real army," Gabidullin said of Russia's setback in Ukraine.
He said people he spoke to on the Russian side had told him they were expected to face obsolete militias when they invaded Ukraine, not well-trained regular forces.
"I told them: 'Guys, it was a mistake'," said Gabidullin, who is now in France where he has published a book about his experiences fighting the Wagner Group.
Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know who Gabidullin was and whether he was a member of a private military company.
"We, the states, the government, the Kremlin can't do anything about it," he said.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Russia has called its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that it says was designed not to occupy territory, but to destroy the military capabilities of its southern neighbor and capture what it considers dangerous nationalists.
Gabidullin is part of a small but growing group of people in Russia, with a security background who have backed President Vladimir Putin's foreign attacks, but now say the way the war is conducted is incompetent.
In line with Gabibullin, Igor Girkin, who helped lead the pro-Kremlin armed uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, criticized the way the campaign is being conducted. Alexei Alexandrov, an architect of the 2014 uprising, told Reuters in March that the invasion was a mistake.
Gabidullin took part in some of the bloodiest Syrian clashes in Deir al-Zor province, in Ghouta and near the ancient city of Palmyra. He was seriously injured in 2016 when a grenade exploded behind his back during fighting in the mountains near Latakia.
He spent a week in a coma and three months in the hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove one of his kidneys and some of his intestines. Reuters has independently verified that he was with the Wagner Group and had fought in Syria.
Wagner Group troops have been accused by human rights groups and the Ukrainian government of committing war crimes in Syria and eastern Ukraine from 2014 onwards. Gabidullin said he had never been involved in any such offence.
Moscow's involvement helped turn the tide of the Syrian war in al-Assad's favor, but Gabidullin said the Russian military was limiting itself primarily to attacks from the air, while relying on Wagner's mercenaries and other proxies to do the lion's share of fighting on the ground.
The task of the Russian military is also easier. Its opponents, ISIS, and other militias, have no anti-aircraft or artillery systems.
Fighting Ukraine, he said, was a different proposition.
"I've seen them enough in Syria. (The Russian military) doesn't take part in the fighting directly," he said in an interview in Paris to promote his book, which will be published by French publisher Michel Lafon this month.
"Military forces, when it is necessary to learn how to fight, do not learn how to actually fight," he said.
Gabidullin said although he knew a Russian invasion of Ukraine was coming, he did not expect it to be on such a scale.
"I can't even think that Russia will wage war on Ukraine. How can that be? Impossible," he said.
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The Wagner Group is an informal entity, with, at least on paper, no offices or staff. The US Treasury and the European Union say the Wagner Group is linked to Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, although he has denied any such link.
Concord Management and Consulting, Prigozhin's main business, did not respond to requests for comment.
President Vladimir Putin said private military contractors have the right to work, pursue their interests anywhere in the world as long as they do not violate Russian laws.
However, President Putin said the Wagner Group did not represent the Russian state or was paid for by it.
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