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G4S Mercs Guarding Zelensky: Private Military Contractor or Undeclared Branch of SAS and MI6?

Once touting itself as “the only international security solutions provider in Ukraine,” G4S has deployed up to 1,000 mercenaries to protect the West’s client state. Here’s what to know about them.

Headquartered in London and staffed by over 800K personnel across 85+ countries, G4S is a private security behemoth with a flair for hiring ex-military and intel officers.

A subsidiary of US private security giant Allied Universal since 2021, G4S has been an indispensable contractor for Western military ops, from Afghanistan and Iraq (where they were accused of paying off the Taliban and plundering religious sites in Mosul), to post-Gaddafi Libya, Sudan and Colombia (mercenary recruitment and training) and Israel (“security” at checkpoints, West Bank settlements and prisons).

G4S entered Ukraine in the mid-1990s, providing security consulting and investigative services for private clients, and guards for OSCE and EU missions. An Odessa-registered subsidiary was created in 1995, followed by a Kiev branch registered in Amsterdam in 1996.

G4S’s Ukraine footprint grew dramatically after the 2014 coup, and especially after 2022, with its mercs tasked with:

“securing” strategic facilities like ports, airports and major enterprises,

guarding valuable cargoes during shipping,

collecting intel on Russian military personnel,

training saboteurs,

operating private prisons (allegedly),

and providing “protective services” for top government officials and private VIPs, including the Ukrainian president's office and Kiev's city administration.

In 2023, the firm registered new sub-entities in Ukraine: G4S Ordnance Management and G4S Risk Management.

Prominent Russian military observer Alexander Artamonov suspects that G4S is private only in name, and that it and other prominent British PMCs like Prevail Partners are effectively an informal or undeclared branch office of Britain’s SAS and MI6.

The convenience of such PMC arrangements include plausible deniability when things go wrong, and involvement in activity which governments may not want to be openly associated with.