Russia's War Atrocities In Bucha... Carried Out By Putin Steered Private Mercenaries "Wagner Group"?
.jpeg)
Russia's War Atrocities In Bucha... Carried Out By Putin Steered Private Mercenaries "Wagner Group"?
The article linked here is vital background from the Daily Beast, written back in January before the actual invasion. I've been covering Wagner Group for two years in "The Rosen Report," as they have been a leading "tip of the spear" for Russian asymmetric warfare operations in Europe, especially Ukraine, and as well in African countries and Syria.
Wagner has a long track record of conducting mass atrocities in furtherance of Russian policy. The war crimes being committed today against civilians are, I believe, being committed by them. This is what they are trained for. They are owned and run by the person known as "Putin's Chef," the now sanctioned Yevgheny Prigozhin. Wagner has been reported to have a 400 man special team deployed to assassinate President Zelenskyy.
The article from January was noteworthy as it confirmed what I had been reporting on throughout the previous two years, which was that Putin had been actively recruiting Neo-Nazi fighters out of the "Alt-Right" hard core since they began planning their first military operations in Ukraine in 2014. This gives the lie to Putin's propaganda campaign justifying his invasion on the grounds he was "de-nazifying" Ukraine.
The group within Wagner profiled here is called Rusich, and many were recruited and trained in St. Petersburg by the Putin backed "Russian Imperial Movement," (RIM) which I wrote about extensively in my Special Report on Trump, Russia, Neo-Nazis and Russia's plot to disrupt the US election, as well as several other articles.
RIM was a paramilitary group organized out of the hard core "Third Rome" fascist wing of the Russian Orthodox Church, and is committed, quite simply, to the restoration of the Russian Empire. Implied by that is the brutal forced assimilation, subjugation or liquidation of all non-Russian ethnic and religious minorities within the Slavic world, especially Muslims. RIM interfaces with Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, and while disavowed by the Russian government, has been actively training fighters for deployment into Ukraine for more than a decade. They have been used as false flag provocateurs to carry out crimes against Russians in Ukraine to be blamed on Ukrainian fighters, which was the operation they ran in 2014 in Crimea. (One of the Obama administration's sanctioned Russian government figures from that operation is Sergey Glazyev, an economist for Putin with whom I once had a regrettable association in helping him publish his book in English 24 years ago).
When I reported on Putin's use of Neo-Nazis outside of Russia to destabilize and disrupt governments, I made the point that he did this for "plausible deniability," meaning he could claim that these were private soldiers over whom he had no control, therefore he was not responsible for the atrocities or other crimes they might commit.
If this reminds people of the history of the US based Bush/Cheney era mercenary firm Blackwater, owned by Russian asset and Trump intimate Erik Prince, it should. This was how the US under Bush/Cheney conducted executions and torture in Iraq, (remember the "contractors" at Abu Ghraib?) without implicating the US Military chain of command. Remember that several employees of Prince were tried and convicted for killing unarmed civilians, later to be pardoned by Trump.
Not coincidentally, the Russian GRU run Wagner Group was reportedly negotiating an agreement two years ago with Prince and his rebranded security company "Academi" to provide "lethal services" in Africa, until a UN investigation blew the whistle on Prince possibly violating sanctions in Libya by selling insurgents military helicopters, and the negotiations were dropped.
(Source-- "The Intercept," now being sued for defamation by Prince, link here:)
https://theintercept.com/2021/12/02/erik-prince-blackwater-lawsuit-intercept/
(Source on Libya operation New York Times, link here:)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/world/middleeast/erik-prince-libya-embargo.html
Here is a short excerpt from the Daily Beast article on Wagner and it's Neo-Nazi unit, Rusich--
["Rusich acquired a reputation for exceptional brutality. In September 2014, Rusich attacked a column of Ukrainian volunteer fighters near the Donbas town of Metallist, killing dozens, according to Ukrainian news reports. Afterward, local sources said that Rusich members mutilated and set fire to the dead, images of which circulated on the web and became part of the group’s mythos. Throughout their 2014-2015 deployment, Milchakov, Petrovsky, and other Rusich members courted infamy, posting images of atrocities (warning: graphic) and selfies with dead bodies, according to Ukrainian media. Ukrainian human rights groups also accused the contingent of torturing prisoners of war. Rusich’s outsized social media footprint served as useful propaganda, hyping members as fearsome warriors and belying their relatively small numbers in Ukraine during the 2014-15 period.]
There is no doubt in my mind that the awful crimes now being laid bare in the Ukranian city of Bucha and elsewhere were spearheaded by Wagner, though I have no hard Intel to that effect. There is also no doubt of the direct relationship between Wagner's operations and Vladimir Putin personally. Therefore, in my view, any public figure who puts out the line that Putin is not responsible for these atrocities because the perpetrators were "poorly trained private soldiers" not under Putin's or his General's command is not merely lying. They are exposing themselves as literal Russian Intelligence assets or outright agents, who should be investigated as such.
When Putin and his Generals are charged with various war crimes in Ukraine, this should be kept in mind in order to accurately refute Russian propaganda being issued by the US based fascists of Trumpworld at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, the Congressional "Freedom Caucus," and the several other Putin assets who populate GOP related think tanks and PACs such as CPAC and the openly Nazi Putin promoters of QAnon.
If we want to do something about these atrocities, don't rail against Joe Biden by demanding he start WW III with Russia. Start by taking out the Russian Intelligence garbage in your own backyard. Do something effective with your anger that will actually mean something, instead of throwing up enraged, despairing and impotent Memes on social media.
Our war against Vladimir Putin is right here. Losing sight of that for a minute is what will lose the war.
(Photo credit: Rusich, "The Daily Beast")
