Deep Dive: Russia 2028 - Part Two: Factions

    Continuing from yesterday's post, today we are going to be talking about the two major factions of the Russia 2028 Universe: USEC and BEAR. They are each shortenings of company names, the first standing for United Security and the second standing for Battle Assault Encounter Regiment. Each of them are Private Military Companies, with the constituents being called either PMCs or Contractors. The first group we will dive into is USEC.

 

    United Security, founded in 1999 after a merger of SafeSea and KerniSec, is a western-based private military company, made up of American and British ex-military mercenaries, that have operated with both British and American government entities in the past, even being hired for operations in Iraq. They use western arms and armor, and are often seen wearing Tan "USEC" branded baseball caps. 

    

    KerniSec was originally founded by an American veteran, although SafeSea has no official lore. A common theory is that it is a British Naval Trade Route protection company, for defense against piracy. USEC is and has been hired by primarily TerraGroup since 2004, and have been used to fight proxy wars in areas near or in Russian territory.

 

    BEAR is a body of the Russian Armed Forces disguised as a private military company, although you should present this as alleged information to your players. They were established to fight actions of USEC and TerraGroup in and around Russia, getting into conflict with USEC long before the events of either game. Some locations include Thailand, Kazakhstan, and Iran. 

 

    Members of BEAR are specially trained Russian soldiers (or soldiers from other Cyrillic speaking countries) that must have already served in military service to be eligible to join. It is also a selection process, meaning that the veteran soldiers of BEAR are that much more trained. As well as this, they generally use the best Russian arms possible, including a Modified AK-12 in the standard kit.

 

    The two groups fight with or against one entity: TerraGroup International Corporation. TerraGroup and it's subsidiary in the Norvinsk Region, TerraGroup Labs, is a agriscience and bioengineering company, which was one of the many companies that helped fuel the Tarkov Scandal before the area turned into a warzone. USEC is what has prevented them from scandal until now, protecting them from the BEAR operatives that have tried to investigate them furter.

 

    There are confirmed sights and reports that TerraGroup Labs had performed experiments on human test subjects with biological weapons and other extremely illegal actions, with an object being seen in the RAID short-film that contains incriminating information about TerraGroup. As time went on with the conflict (the Contract Wars and Hired Ops games show this), eventually TerraGroup abandoned USEC in the Norvinsk region, with the Kremlin doing the same.