That’s Dnepropetrovsk mayor Boris Filatov, close Kolomoisky acolyte and Maidan hardliner:
First you go to meetings for the Russian world.
Then you flee Dnepropetrovsk to Kramatorsk.
Then you return, and free form the police.
Then you flee to Crimea, and your “Russian brothers deport you to Ukraine (!!!). …
Remember the famous separatist [Marina] Menshikova? The one that hit an ATO fighter with a hammer in the theater.
Today she hanged herself in a Dnepropetrovsk detention facility.
“Russia will betray you, son. Always.”
Well, he’s not wrong. This pretty much summarizes the whole affair, with these two comments [1, 2] filling in the rest of the details.
There are serious questions over whether she actually did commit suicide, or was “helped” with it – she apparently shared her cell with two other women. Incidentally, Filatov is perhaps most famous for his 2014 suggestions on how to deal with the Crimean separatists: “We need to give the bastards all sorts of promises, guarantees, and concessions… And then hang them.”
A further piquant detail is that the judge who ordered her deportation, Sergey Krasikov, is apparently related to the prosecutor in charge of her case in Dnepropetrovsk. Crimean channels and discussion forums have noted that the same judges who pronounced sentences for “anti-Ukrainian activities” before 2014 continue to serve under the Russian Federation – a sort of Ukrainian “deep state in miniature.”
Thing is, these problems didn’t appear today. Every month if not week, there are stories of some Donbass veteran or anti-Maidan activist getting put into deportation proceedings to an assured prison sentence, if not death, in the Ukraine. My impression is that most of these cases get dismissed, thanks to pressure from patriotic and nationalist civic groups (liberal HR organizations obviously don’t concern themselves with such unhandshakeworthy cases), but inevitably, this slapdash defense system fails now and then, and another sacrificial victim is sent on his or her merry way to Kiev by the soulless Russian bureaucratic machine.
What needs to be done – what would have been done long ago in any normal, national state – is obvious. There should have been a ban on deportations to the Ukraine – if not a blanket one, then at least for trivial immigration violations. There should have been a drastically simplified and accelerated citizenship process for Ukrainian and Belorussian citizens. There should have been a serious lustration of Ukraine loyalists, and judges and bureaucrats who abused the free speech and human rights of Russians under the old regime.
It is equally obvious that none of this was done nor will be done, because the Russian Federation is not for Russians.
Who is it for? Well, as one Sergey Belous caustically noted, here’s a headline from exactly a year ago: “Russia to allow re-entry to 200,000 Tajiks previously barred for immigration violations.”
In the meantime, there has been no official Russian reaction. The judge who deported Menshikova remains in his position. The usual pro-Kremlin blowhards claim that it was an operation to “discredit Russia and its President” (as if they don’t do that splendidly on their own). As one of my Twitter followers noted, “and after this, we wonder why no-one in the Ukraine wants to rise up against the Maidan regime… Look at how America cares more for the denizens of some Eastern Ghouta.” Considering the “rewards” the Russian Federation regularly deals out to its own supporters – and the excuses for this behavior generated by Putin’s pseudo-patriotic plankton – the apathy is quite understandable.
Perhaps the one consolation is that the UkSSR doesn’t seem to treat its Russian vyshyvanka larpers any better.
A couple of years ago, the journal Sputnik & Pogrom had a comprehensive article on the unenviable fate of Russian traitors in the Ukraine. Representative quote from the Russian Neo-Nazi Alexander Valov, who fought in Azov:
“We are no longer needed. The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. And [to them] we are not even Moors, but moskals, katsaps, and Russian scum… Now they are doing everything they can to avoid legalizing us in the Ukraine.
Pro-Ukrainian Russian activists were viewed as potential fifth columnists. Volunteers had trouble getting residency, not to mention citizenship. Some were deported to a cosy Russian jail.
Two years on, and nothing has changed.
Although its easy to laugh at vatniks/svidomy getting their just desserts [cross out as per your ideological affiliation], the reality is that neither pro-Russians nor pro-Ukrainians have any particular cause to engage in Schadenfreude. Not when both live under neo-feudal regimes that care naught for, and indeed have a mutual interest in suppressing, any genuine expression of civic initiative and political idealism.
Tragic case…
There’s a photograph of the woman in question in this article, as well as some further interesting details:
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/4021792.html
Apparently she had a brother who wanted to take over control of her apartment in Crimea, and constantly filed complaints against her to local authorities and media. Eventually, he was successful and managed to get her deported. I’m sure he’s feeling very good about himself now, owning her apartment and being responsible for her death. He also apparently had sent thugs after her, which was the reason she carried a hammer on her person, and which she eventually used in 2016, in a Ukrainian movie theatre in defense against an ATO-veteran who began harassing her.
What I don’t get is why would she even visit Ukraine in 2016? How could she be so deluded about her safety in that country, as an anti-Maidan person?
Apparently, her name was on the Ukrainian “Myrotvorets” (“Peacemaker”) website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrotvorets
Somebody in the colonelcassad comments wrote (if I understood them correctly) that it’s illegal in Russia to even mention that website (as “extremist”), and that one can’t use it in a court case to show that there is a risk to one’s life in Ukraine, because that would be using banned extremist material as evidence:
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/4021792.html?thread=912894752#t912894752
Is this true? As a Russian resident, how confined is your speech on this issue?
I understand why Putin isn’t supporting the separatists, but why is he deporting Russians to the Ukraine? I could understand it if he was getting something out of it but the sanctions are still in place and it isn’t like it is improving relations with Kiev.
The handling of the Wagner case in Syria was just as incomprehensible. Unfortunately Russia will crumble just as much as the US because of the incompetence and multiculturalist poz of its ruling elites.
I now put my hopes in China: I hope that they will be merciful, and maybe some people here will start emulating them. Hopefully before it’s too late.
But isn’t the whole point of using mercenaries so you don’t have to react when they get killed?
I guess I’m in the minority here, but I don’t think Russia should have started WWIII over Wagner. Not responding made sense especially considering that Russia wants to continue to cooperate with the US in Syria.
But extraditing people who have fought for you to the country that they were fighting against for you is just insanity. Like if this was actually going to improve relations between Russia and the Ukraine or to get the sanctions dropped it would at least make sense. But Russia is doing it in exchange for nothing. Unless there is something I’m missing.
Mercenaries by definition are not operating under any national government.
No one proposed starting a war (world or not) for this. The Americans warned them in advance that they were going to attack them, and not to have Russians among them. Presumably the Americans wanted to avoid killing Russians and so giving a pretext for some kind of retaliation.
The Russians could easily have told the Americans to hold off and cancel their attack against the American supported militia. Instead, apparently they told the Americans that there were no Russians and so they could go ahead with the attack. This with the full knowledge that the mercenaries (not really mercenaries, since Wagner is an arm of GRU) were equipped with assault rifles only.
You don’t send your soldiers to be massacred by an enemy who is so desperate to avoid massacring them that he warns you off beforehand.
These were not really mercenaries, since Wagner is an arm of GRU.
In other words, you don’t send in your troops with assault rifles if your enemy just told you they will annihilate them. Just cancel the attack.
What is the probability of this being non intentional and is because of pure inefficiency ?
I wouldn’t put too much stock in China having ‘mercy’. The Chinese are ruthless pragmatists, which is why I like them. I do agree with you when you say that you hope others will emulate them. I view the Chinese as an example to follow in many areas, even if there are always some instances where I strongly dislike their orientation (as is normal for any major country/power).
I suppose I am simply out of touch when it comes to popular attitudes on the right regarding Russia, then. I always laugh when I hear how Russia is somehow this WN paradise/saviour. Obviously, the vast majority of people who spin such nonsense are typically located in the Anglosphere and seek to externalise their desperation onto a Saviour At Dawn On A Shining Hill. That role is, for now, occupied by Russia. It was by Trump a year ago before even the biggest Trumptards started to understand that he’s not the God Emperor but rather the ZOG Emperor.
Why, then, would one assume that Russia nevertheless has a better shot than the US? For starters, Russia as it exists today is actuallly more homogenous than it has been for many centuries. For most of the last centuries, Russia – which includes territories ruled by it – has been ever-expanding. It could only do this by submerging the Russian identity and welcome outsiders. That’s how you get a quarter-Jew Lenin and a non-Russian Stalin as your leaders. It’s how you set up an (inefficient) system which is based on giving Russia’s surplus to its less efficient provinces.
Russia, as it is today, is actually a historical anomaly if you look at the modern historical period. Russia does not have long experience in being an ethnic state and so it is natural that it will take time for this consciousness to rise.
The same is true in many ways in Poland, too. The left is right when they say that Poland has been multicultural for most of its history. The recent ultra-homogeneity is an anachronism of historical events which were beyond the control of Poland. We are still learning, in a way, how to deal with this and that includes observing trends abroad in our immediate neighborhood.
How Russia handles its own newfound (relative) homogeneity is something I will follow for the coming years. Right now, it seems to default back to its historical position of being a multicultural Empire, but there is still plenty of time for reconsiderations. As far as I know, most of the Gastarbeiters are not citizens, most of them are male and as such don’t have any significant fertility and future technological trends will favour a country like Russia, which has high human capital but low quantitative population growth. Which in turn would reduce for these workers over the coming few decades. On top of that, the successful example of a highly ethnocentric China would also be very helpful in showing a successful counter-model on the world stage.
If people get very down on Russia, I may need to take a contrarian position again, from having tempered the nationalist right that Russia is not the fairy-tale land of your dreams to now cautioning people not to give up on Russia per-maturely. It’s not a country you should give up on.
OT: A layman’s guide on the recent cold in Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1sw5qLpuSU&feature=youtu.be
They are not actively malevolent, like they don’t want us to join them in some self-destructive cult, they just want to take what they need. That is bad if you are close to them, but might be okay if you are far away, like Europe is from China. Russia is similar, only closer, and its leaders are more insane.
Poles gonna Pole. I wouldn’t count on many fruit baskets coming your way if I were you.
It’s not something that Putin or the Russian government do consciously – it’s an embedded feature of the current system: Bureaucratic inertia (and in Menshikova’s case, apparently, outright pro-Ukrainian corruption) coupled with the weakness of Russian civil society.
Approximately my view as well.
Another thing Russia has going in its favor is that as in most of Eastern Europe, at least 70% of the country are vatniks (rednecks), vs. 40% in the US and even less in Western Europe.
but they did do it consciously, or are you saying they sent her to the Ukraine by accident?
Maybe Putin has a reason that you just aren’t seeing. It’s also possible that Putin actually wants to discourage separatist activity in the eastern Ukraine, this would be in line with statements he has made.
They weren’t Russian soldiers. They weren’t engaged in a Russia government operation.
I genuinely don’t understand why the incident is such a big deal for you.
I try to maintain a reasonably rational balance between the “Putin’s a god and Russia’s shit don’t stink” (as I think utu put it the other day) extreme that’s quite common around here (I mean Unz generally) and the “Putin’s the devil and Russia’s a gas station with nukes that is going to conquer the world” nuttery that prevails in most of the US sphere MSM, and I’m quite willing to criticise Russia where it seems appropriate (such as over their NK diplomacy recently). I can understand thinking the Wagner incident is a rather embarrassing incident that doesn’t reflect well upon the Russian elite, but I really don’t understand why so much significance should be placed upon it as you and AK do.
In AK’s case it’s presumably because he’s against Russian intervention in Syria (for reasons I certainly understand, just don’t agree with) and therefore sees it as an opportunity to criticise that situation in general. I don’t think that applies in your case.
As for this case, well it appears to be another sad reflection on the reality that governments are not loyal to their nation’s people, in general. They aren’t even loyal to their own (the government’s) people unless there’s a material benefit to them to be so.
Here’s a description of the rapid air war between Israel and the Iranians and Assad on February 10.
Likely the Israelis launched a huge and largely successful attack, but then lost one aircraft. (Obviously pilot error, but errors are bound to happen sooner or later.) The loss was not significant enough to prevent the Israelis from launching a second wave, but this time against closer targets around Damascus. The second wave was also successful, but the outlandish Israeli claims about having destroyed half the Syrian air defenses appear to be nonsense, as expected.
Randal, why don’t you consider the following facts:
1) Wagner is technically illegal in Russia, they operate as a “plausible deniability” arm of the Russian Armed Forces under the tutelage of the military intelligence (GRU). So unless there’s some serious incompetence, people in the Russian military should know how to notify them, and also the major operations they are involved in. But at the very minimum they should know how to notify them.
2) The Americans specifically forewarned the Russian command. At a minimum, a competent military command would have sent a warning to Wagner about the American warning even if they knew nothing about Wagner involvement (though I guess they should have been informed, so it would already point to serious communications problems within different parts of the Russian military leadership).
3) A competent Wagner leadership then would immediately have canceled the action and ordered a hasty retreat.
So, either there was some serious incompetence (Russian command forgets to warn Wagner about something, Wagner fails to act on the warning), which is very bad, or something worse.
Unacceptable against enemies as primitive and stupid as Iranians and Syrians who were using stone age technology. Typical IDF arrogance and hubris. It was supposed to be a trivial operation but the IDF could very well have started a regional war with their bumbling.
The bigger the talk, the less meaningful the operation actually was. When Israel destroyed Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007 (which North Korea was building by the way, Syrians and Iranians are too stupid to construct a nuclear reactor since that uses 1940’s technology which is obviously way beyond the abilities of those nations) there was complete silence from Israel. When you are successful, you don’t need to talk your own book, you just let the results speak for themselves.
In this case though you had Bibi and the IDF acting like they had just destroyed the entire Syrian army. I knew right then and there that they hadn’t done anything of note.
They killed a pro-Iranian militia commander and a Syrian army major general. (Dubbed the “Syrian Chemical Ali,” the commander of the chemical safety forces or whatever they are called, I guess nominally responsible for reacting to a chemical attack, but mostly just handling Syria’s own chemical weapons.) That means the attacks were successful, because killing senior commanders is always a success for such a short attack. But it was only that and nothing more – a relatively successful short attack.
I would note that while the original wave of attack’s target was in the middle of Syria, the second, retaliatory attack only dared to target Damascus, close to Israeli airspace.
From all this, I guess it was more a success for Syria than for Israel.
so is what happened that the IAF actually was unscathed over central Syria against high quality air defense but then proceeded to lose one of their most advanced aircraft against a 60 year old missile over Israeli airspace? The War is Boring article is very confusing. I had just assumed that the IAF had been caught in an ambush which would have been disgraceful but at least understandable.
Israel is used to being humiliated. Israelis get off on it. But that is an egregious humiliation even by Israeli standards.
Also, right after the loss of the jet, the Israeli government ministers and IDF all ran to the press talking about how they were going to reign death and destruction upon Syria in retaliation. It took one phone call from Putin to shut them up completely.
Fucking losers. They should enjoy the time they have left because when the religious take over us religious Jews will erase the secular from existence.
Definitely. But Israel routinely loses to unarmed Palestinian teenage girls so Syria probably shouldn’t brag about this one.
There’s nothing there I haven’t considered.
Wagner is surely used by the Russian government, but it also undoubtedly operates private profitable schemes independently, where those schemes don’t conflict with the Russian government’s overall objectives. In this case someone at the top probably agreed with someone in government that if they can pull off a private incursion then that would be useful to Russian government objectives in the region.
For sure the military people at a reasonably senior level would presumably have known how to warn them. But there’s no reason why they should necessarily have felt any need or inclination to do so, if they hadn’t been given any orders to do so.
Someone screwed up, at some level, either incompetently or deliberately. But the flipside of the deniability benefits of private enterprise military operations is precisely less tight coordination with official military structures.
In this case it seems to have backfired. So what? (In geopolitical terms I mean – clearly it’s a disaster for the individuals involved and their relatives, but gun for hire is hardly a career where such things are unheard of.) There was a fuss at the time mostly because people thought this was a US attack n a Russian government operation, so people held their breath for a while in anticipation of potentially serious consequences. The Russians exercised the deniability option. Who now cares about the incident apart from those directly involved, and those seeking to use it as a political criticism?
2 & 3 pretty much just amplify the same points already covered.
I don’t know about you, but I expect incompetence and venality from government and especially from the shadowy power elites around their “deniable” mercenary outfits. What’s so important about this particular incident?
Something worth considering, eh Anatoly? Hundreds of Russian journalists have died in violent or mysterious deaths trying to prove this point under Putin’s rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia
Maybe my expectations are too high, but it seems to me that it would have been pretty easy to prevent it. Like a phone call could have prevented it.
If I talk to a mafia boss who tells me that you will be whacked unless you avoid doing something, then I think it’s pretty reasonable expectation that I will call you and warn you of it. (I’m now assuming I had your phone number.) I think you would be rightfully angry if I failed to warn you and as a result you nearly die. Even though I have nothing to do with you, it’s obvious that unless I wanted to see you dead I’d warn you. That’s a pretty basic expectation. I’d warn people from here with whom I rarely agree, like Mr. Hack. I’d warn anyone who I didn’t explicitly hate. (Assuming no threat of retaliation for having warned him, and no additional costs, just making the phone call: as was the case here.)
I imagine that Russians very much care that dozens of Russian citizens were murdered by the illegally present US forces in Syria and Russia did nothing.
I am not Russian and even my blood boils when I read American comments like “yeah, the russkies got their shit pushed in, that’s what Putin understands” and “Mess with the best, die like the rest!” comments. Such comments dominated both the liberast reddit and the redneck Breitbart.
The Wagner guys were soldiers and were Russian, so nobody cares about technicalities like “they were not actually Russian soldiers”. Americans certainly don’t when they gloat about killing them with their “superior use of combined arms” by the Mad Dog Muttis, ignoring that the Russians did not use the combined arms and tactics that they have.
Besides the human tragedy of soldiers who fought for the interests of Russia in both Donbass and Syria dying without the Russian government giving a shit, there is also a significant element of humiliation before the foreign enemy. And Putin and his cucks allowed this, just like they allowed other humiliations like the Olympics.
That seems clearly true.
Again, the point is this was not a Russian government or Russian military operation. Who knows who knew what about what was happening on the ground that night amongst the various senior Russian military men involved.
Seems likely either someone who ought to have known something didn’t know it, or someone knew something and chose not to act on that knowledge, presumably because their orders permitted them not to and they had some personal reason not to want to. Dislike and resentment of private operators is not at all unknown amongst senior military ranks in most armies.
The first attack was directed at a target deep inside of Syria and the F-16I was shot down while on the way home. The first hit (which only damaged the plane but didn’t fully take it down) happened still outside Israeli airspace, but then the final hit struck the plane I think already in Israeli airspace, and the plane was already damaged and partially lame from the first hit.
The second Israeli attack already didn’t try to penetrate Syrian airspace too deeply and so there was probably little chance of a hit.
That’s true, but outside of those with connections to those involved, and those with political animus against the Russian government, it seems likely that will all be rather quickly forgotten – probably at the latest when the next opportunity to crow over the other side presents itself. (I’m talking here about this particular incident, not the ongoing Donbas situation – that’s another matter)
The only way it might prove significant would be if the upset is sufficient, and sufficiently lasting, to generate political pressure on Putin to respond either publicly or with some retaliatory confrontational action. That doesn’t look likely to me at the moment, but I’m not in Russia.
Kindly leave such grousing to emotionally incontinent homosexuals like James Mattis.
This, by the way, seems a little rash on Putin’s part:
“During the two-hour televised speech to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament, he encouraged Russians to suggest names for the two systems. ”
Considering what the NERC got when they said they’d let their new vessel’s name be suggested by the people.
You’re confusing journalism to ‘hack’ commenting. 🙂
But it’s good to see that the truth elicits such a reaction as yours.
Oh god, we don’t have to see that nonsense here. Just stop. One of the nastiests russophobic myths IMO, and that’s saying something:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/trump-right-on-putin/
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-journalists-are-far-safer-than-mexican-journalists-ordinary-russians-and-their-own-counterparts-under-yeltsin/
By the way, in recent days I read an analysis on a Hungarian website (but it was obviously based on some English language stuff; unfortunately I forgot to save it, and it’s in Hungarian anyway), about the Su-57 deployment in Syria, and they wrote that the Su-57 might already be used for reconnaissance, so there might be some limited usefulness to the deployment.
There is often dislike and resentment among general officers within the same military, too, but you need to outright hate them, and hate them a lot, to let them die such needless deaths, especially in a war where they were explicitly fighting for your side.
Boaty McBoatface is an awesome name for a science vessel imo.
Plus, a funny name for a nuclear missile would be continuing Russian traditions.
https://sputniknews.com/military/201509111026885967-funny-names-russian-weapons/
I don’t think such a personal feeling as hatred is required, for a senior military man to pass up on warning a group he doesn’t like that isn’t part of his organisation and that he has no orders to look out for.
I look forward to hearing about the new Russian Missile McMissileface then…..
Yeah, and according to MoD, the planes were there only for 2 days.
It also seems that the extremely negative War is Boring article about the program that Anatoly linked a while ago is largely BS as well. It just basically lists every single trope and negative rumour about the Su-57, some of which are quite obviously not true at this point (like the claim that there have been no weapons tests, that the plane is not stealthy, that it requires Indian funding and the silly “analysis” about Pogosyan’s departure sounds like kremlinology…).
The fact that there are already a dozen or so prototypes, and the recent Izdeliye 30 tests IMO prove that the program has not been a disaster and the issues that is clearly has should not be exaggerated. That being said, the recent “estimates” and even announcements about its production numbers are not encouraging AT ALL, there’s no spinning that.
Indeed, you can compare that to the J-20 program (sorry, sinotriumphalism incoming), however it clearly really triggers most russophiles. So that didn’t go well too well on the Russian Military Forum’s Su-57 thread recently, lol. “1. B-b-b-but their Su-35 order, 2. the J-20 has a PESA-radar (even though 4.5th generation J-10Cs and J-16s already have AESA-radars, not to mention that we have J-20 AESAs designation and estimated T/R count, and we’re talking about the PLA and its transparency, also Chinese electronics industry is somehow inferior to the Russian one in 2018), 3. they are going to order Su-57s someday and then just copy them.”
The reality is that already a few dozen J-20s are operational (which is potentially the number of Su-57s operational by around 2025, get your head around that, quite amazing how the world – and especially China – has changed), albeit not with the final engines atm, of course. I guess that’s the difference between a superpower and a great power, and between a 20+ trillion economy and a 4 trillion economy.
I now put my hopes in China:
Eyelid surgery will likely be the source of many $millions for plastic surgeons.
Not soldiers were harmed. It was just contractors working for private.
Because people in high-level of government are usually more intelligent, cynical and experienced men than the average. They are ‘somebodies’ – they are going to care less about some unfortunate ‘nobodies’ that took too seriously propaganda they put out for light consumption. Maybe they should have put out a health warning on some of the propaganda like they have on paracetamol – this is for light consumption, don’t over-dose, go to war zone and ruin your life for our light-fiction material, enjoy!
Certainly the Russian government has handled the aftermath of this event in a (typically) weak and stupid way. However, the facts regarding the event itself are so unclear, I don’t think it’s fair to assume they deserve much of the blame for it happening. It could be that the Russian military genuinely didn’t know there were Wagner personnel present in the area. It also could be that the Americans are lying about issuing a warning. I think there probably was some sort of communication. But if the Americans really were desperate to avoid a massacre, it’s a bit strange that they would call the Russian military about the advancing column, but not fire any warning shots at the column itself (as they had fired warning shots, in previous incidents near al-Tanf). It’s unclear to me from the WaPo story whether there was more than one call to the Russians that night, but the story makes it sound like the call in which the Russians said there were no Russians there, took place after the firing had already started:
Below is the only account I’ve seen of the Feb 7 incident from the pro-Syrian side, posted on the Twitter feed of the Russian-trained ISIS Hunters, which claims the US attack followed a battle between the Hunters and ISIS forces, who retreated towards the oil field. It doesn’t mention Wagner, but a 2017 story on the ISIS Hunters mentions that Wagner personnel have been involved with their training, and been previously killed in battle alongside them, so it makes sense that this could have been a joint ISIS Hunter/Wagner operation.
Initially, I was fairly confident this was much closer to the truth than the US version, given that the massacred forces do not seem to have been deployed or equipped in a manner consistent with an attack on an enemy possessing close air support. And this wouldn’t be the first time that US airstrikes have slaughtered pro-government forces fighting ISIS. On 9/17/16, also in Deir ez-Zor, the US killed about 100 Syrian troops (coincidentally, matching the US estimate of the death toll in the Feb 7 incident), who were defending the then-besieged provincial capital from ISIS. But in that case, there was no US base anywhere nearby, so the US couldn’t claim self-defense and had to admit its attack was an “accident.”
However, the Hunters’ version has subsequently been called into question by the Deep State leaks to the WaPo, as well as Business Insider’s unverified transcripts of leaked audio recordings from Wagner mercenaries during the massacre, both of which indicate this was a planned attempt by Wagner to capture the oil field. Of course, it’s possible that those leaks are pure disinformation. But the WaPo claims are sufficiently detailed, that my sense is they are unlikely to be completely made up. And it’s hard to see how both versions could be partially true. Maybe ISIS had previously conducted raids on SAA positions in that area, and Wagner decided that the next time such an attack occurred, they would use their counterattack as a cover to seize the oilfield. But the WaPo claims that Prigozhin referred to a “good surprise” for Assad within the very specific time frame of Feb 6-9. And presumably ISIS wouldn’t notify the SAA of their attack schedule in advance. So unless Prigozhin could have been referring to something else, it seems like someone is lying here (although regardless of what the truth is, the Americans are still illegal invaders, and Wagner would have been perfectly justified in seeking to liberate the oilfield).
Agree.
And with all Randal comments here re the “Wagner Incident”.
Here’s an interesting piece from Der Spiegel, which is usually a pretty reliable part of the US sphere propaganda machine, but occasionally publishes good reasonably honest stuff. It’s unlikely they would be protecting the Russian government, put it that way.
The Truth About the Russian Deaths in Syria
Sounds pretty plausible.
See above interesting Spiegel piece. From their account, it looks like a Syrian government operation, but not a major one – a light probe with mostly militia irregulars, basically, testing any US response. If there’s a criticism it would be of coordination between the Russians and the Syrians, I suppose.
Again, the point is this was not a Russian government or Russian military operation.
“Randal” is an apologist for Russian-powers-that-be.
That’s Randy. Deny, deny, deny that the Roosky Establishment had anything to do with the Wagner fiasco. That is the point he’s trying to sell.
Trump is the most pro Zionist president in any recent times.
Lets face it, hes not a “god”, not an “emperor”. Hes a puppet.
He has Jews in his family, he got aid/support/money from Jews.
He works with Chabad Lubovitch. He prefered to side with Israel over even Anglo nations (traditional allies) on the Jerusalem issue.
There are a bunch of Jewish ZIonist surrounding him and advisers.
These are just facts.
I know that this is a foreign concept to Poles, but somebody can be pro Jewish without being a puppet.
Trump has basically single handedly saved the Assad regime by ending most of Obama’s aid to the Syrian rebels and destroying ISIS in Iraq. Bibi has been screaming bloody murder asking for Trump to intervene with the Russians to stop the Iranian build up in Syria and Trump’s response has basically been “talk to the Russians yourself”.
We (the Jews) love Trump but if we were controlling him I can assure you he would be doing a Hell of a lot more for us.