With mercenaries increasingly seen as a go-to solution for some of the world's most devilish security problems, Blackwater founder and Donald Trump donor Erik Prince is reported to be pitching his private military services in Ukraine.

Russia's dependence on hired guns for its costly invasion of Ukraine is well-known, at first through the cocktail of atrocities and treason served up by the Wagner Group, and now via an elaborate ecosystem of other Kremlin-linked corporations fielding tens of thousands of Russian "volunteers" on the frontlines, supplemented by third-country mercenaries from Asia and Africa.

African states, too, have started hiring Russian, Turkish, Romanian, and South African private military companies (PMCs) to battle insurgencies, to deploy drones against jihadists, and to reclaim resource-rich areas taken over by rebels.

Far from recoiling at this growing trend, which involves corporate entities performing military tasks independently of the state—and for motives related to profit rather than patriotism and duty—the Trump administration appears to be embracing it. Prince's visit to Ukraine came only days after it was rumored that President Donald Trump wanted to square the circle of his reluctance to commit U.S. troops to Ukraine with the urgent need for U.S. security guarantees, by resorting to........

© Newsweek