Another Big Win For Putin!!!

Scientific Playa

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Basayev and al-Khattab imported fighters from the Saudi fanatical Wahhabite strain of Sunni Islam into Chechnya. Ibn al-Khattab commanded what were called the “Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya,” his own private army of Arabs, Turks, and other foreign fighters. He was also commissioned to set up paramilitary training camps in the Caucasus Mountains of Chechnya that trained Chechens and Muslims from the North Caucasian Russian republics and from Central Asia.

The Saudi and CIA-financed Islamic International Brigade was responsible not only for terror in Chechnya. They carried out the October 2002 Moscow Dubrovka Theatre hostage seizure and the gruesome September 2004 Beslan school massacre. In 2010, the UN Security Council published the following report on al-Khattab and Basayev’s International Islamic Brigade:

Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was listed on 4 March 2003. . . as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” Al-Qaida. . . The Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was founded and led by Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (deceased) and is linked to the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs (RSRSBCM). . . and the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR). . .

On the evening of 23 October 2002, members of IIB, RSRSBCM and SPIR operated jointly to seize over 800 hostages at Moscow’s Podshipnikov Zavod (Dubrovka) Theater.

In October 1999, emissaries of Basayev and Al-Khattab traveled to Usama bin Laden’s home base in the Afghan province of Kandahar, where Bin Laden agreed to provide substantial military assistance and financial aid, including by making arrangements to send to Chechnya several hundred fighters to fight against Russian troops and perpetrate acts of terrorism. Later that year, Bin Laden sent substantial amounts of money to Basayev, Movsar Barayev (leader of SPIR) and Al-Khattab, which was to be used exclusively for training gunmen, recruiting mercenaries and buying ammunition.

The Afghan-Caucasus Al Qaeda “terrorist railway,” financed by Saudi intelligence, had two goals. One was a Saudi goal to spread fanatical Wahhabite Jihad into the Central Asian region of the former Soviet Union. The second was the CIA’s agenda of destabilizing a then-collapsing post-Soviet Russian Federation.

Beslan

On September 1, 2004, armed terrorists from Basayev and al-Khattab’s IIB took more than 1,100 people as hostages in a siege that included 777 children, and forced them into School Number One (SNO) in Beslan in North Ossetia, the autonomous republic in the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation near to the Georgia border.

On the third day of the hostage crisis, as explosions were heard inside the school, FSB and other elite Russian troops stormed the building. In the end, at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children, with a significant number of people injured and reported missing. It became clear afterward that the Russian forces had handled the intervention poorly.

The Washington propaganda machine, from Radio Free Europe to The New York Times and CNN, wasted no time demonizing Putin and Russia for their bad handling of the Beslan crisis rather than focus on the links of Basayev to Al Qaeda and Saudi intelligence. That would have brought the world’s attention to the intimate relations between the family of then US President George W. Bush and the Saudi billionaire bin Laden family.

On September 1, 2001, just ten days before the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Saudi Intelligence head US-educated Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, who had directed Saudi Intelligence since 1977, including through the entire Osama bin Laden Mujahideen operation in Afghanistan and into the Caucasus, abruptly and inexplicably resigned, just days after having accepted a new term as intelligence head from his King. He gave no explanation. He was quickly reposted to London, away from Washington.

The record of the bin Laden-Bush family intimate ties was buried, in fact entirely deleted on “national security” (sic!) grounds in the official US Commission Report on 911. The Saudi background of fourteen of the nineteen alleged 911 terrorists in New York and Washington was also deleted from the US Government’s final 911 Commission report, released only in July 2004 by the Bush Administration, almost three years after the events.

Basayev claimed credit for having sent the terrorists to Beslan. His demands had included the complete independence of Chechnya from Russia, something that would have given Washington and the Pentagon an enormous strategic dagger in the southern underbelly of the Russian Federation.

By late 2004, in the aftermath of the tragic Beslan drama, President Vladimir Putin reportedly ordered a secret search and destroy mission by Russian intelligence to hunt and kill key leaders of the Caucasus Mujahideen of Basayev. Al-Khattab had been killed in 2002. The Russian security forces soon discovered that most of the Chechen Afghan Arab terrorists had fled. They had gotten safe haven in Turkey, a NATO member; in Azerbaijan, by then almost a NATO Member; or in Germany, a NATO Member; or in Dubai–one of the closest US Allies in the Arab States, and Qatar-another very close US ally. In other words, the Chechen terrorists were given NATO safe haven.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/15/what-if-putin-is-telling-the-truth/
 

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Author: F. William Engdahl

Why I Wept at the Russian Parade
Column: Society
Region: Russia in the World

Something extraordinary just took place in Russia and it may have moved our disturbed world one major step nearer to peace and away from a looming new world war. Of all unlikely things, what took place was a nationwide remembrance by Russians of the estimated 27 to perhaps 30 million Soviet citizens who never returned alive from World War II. Yet in what can only be described in a spiritual manner, the events of May 9, Victory Day over Nazism, that took place across all Russia, transcended the specific day of memory on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1945. It was possible to see a spirit emerge from the moving events unlike anything this author has ever witnessed in his life.

The event was extraordinary in every respect. There was a sense in all participants that they were shaping history in some ineffable way. It was no usual May 9 annual show of Russia’s military force. Yes, it featured a parade of Russia’s most advanced military hardware, including the awesome new T-14 Armata tanks, S-400 anti-missile systems and advanced Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. It was indeed impressive to watch.

The military part of the events also featured for the first time ever elite soldiers from China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army marching in formation along with Russian soldiers. That in itself should shivers down the spines of the neoconservative warhawks in the EU and Washington, had they any spines to shiver. The alliance between the two great Eurasian powers—Russia and China—is evolving with stunning speed into a new that will change the economic dynamic of our world from one of debt, depression, and wars to one of rising general prosperity and development if we are good enough to help make it happen.

During his visit, China’s President XI, in addition to his quite visible honoring of the Russian Victory event and its significance for China, met separately with Vladimir Putin and agreed that China’s emerging New Silk Road high-speed railway infrastructure great project will be integrated in planning and other respects with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union which now consists of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia with several prospective candidates waiting to join. While it may seem an obvious step, it was not at all certain until now.

The two great Eurasian countries have now cemented the huge oil and gas deals between them, the trade deals and the military cooperation agreements with a commitment to fully integrate their economic infrastructure. Following his meeting with Xi, Putin told the press, “The integration of the Eurasian Economic Union and Silk Road projects means reaching a new level of partnership and actually implies a common economic space on the continent.”

It’s Zbigniew Brzezinski’s worst geopolitical nightmare come to fruition. And that, thanks to the stupid, short-sighted geopolitical strategy of Brzezinski and the Washington war faction that made it clear to Beijing and to Moscow their only hope for sovereign development and to be free of the dictates of a Washington-Wall Street Sole Superpower was to build an entire monetary and economic space independent of the dollar world.

The Parade of the Good

Yet the most extraordinary part of the day-long events was not the show of military hardware at a time when NATO is not only rattling sabres at Russia, but even intervening militarily in Ukraine to provoke Russia into some form of war.

What was extraordinary about the May 9 Victory Day Parade was the citizens’ remembrance march, a symbolic parade known as the March of the Immortal Regiment, a procession through the streets of Moscow into the famous and quite beautiful Red Square. The square, contrary to belief of many in the West was not named so by the “Red” Bolsheviks. It took its name from Czar Alexei Mikhailovich in the mid-17th Century from a Russian word which now means red. Similar Immortal Regiment parades involving an estimated twelve million Russians took place all over Russia at the same time, from Vladivostock to St. Petersburg to Stevastopol in what is now Russian Crimea.

In an atmosphere of reverence and quiet, some three hundred thousand Russians, most carrying photos or portraits of family members who never returned from the war, walked on the beautiful, sunny spring day through downtown Moscow into Red Square where the President’s residence, the famous Kremlin, is also located.

To see the faces of thousands and thousands of ordinary Russians walking, optimism about their future beaming from their faces, young and the very old, including surviving veterans of the Great Patriotic War as it is known to Russians, moved this writer to quietly weep. What was conveyed in the smiles and eyes of the thousands of marchers was not a looking back in the sense of sorrow at the horrors of that war. Rather what came across so clearly was that the parade was a gesture of loving respect and gratitude to those who gave their lives that today’s Russia might be born, a new, future-looking Russia that is at the heart of building the only viable alternative to a one-world dictatorship under a Pentagon Full Spectrum Dominance and a dollar system choking on debt and fraud. The entire Russian nation exuded a feeling of being good and of being victorious. Few peoples have that in today’s world.

When the television cameras zoomed in on President Vladimir Putin who was also marching, he was walking freely and open amid the thousands of citizens, holding a picture of his deceased father who had served in the war and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin was surrounded not by bulletproof limousines that any US President since the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 would have, were he even to dare to get close to a crowd. There were three or four presidential security people near Putin, but there were thousands of ordinary Russians within arm’s length of one of the most influential world leaders of the present time. There was no climate of fear visible anywhere.

My tears

My tears at seeing the silent marchers and at seeing Putin amid them was an unconscious reaction to what, on reflection, I realized was my very personal sense of recognition how remote from anything comparable in my own country, the United States of America, such a memorial march in peace and serenity would be today. There were no “victory” marches after US troops destroyed Iraq; no victory marches after Afghanistan; no victory marches after Libya. Americans today have nothing other than wars of death and destruction to commemorate and veterans coming home with traumas and radiation poisonings that are ignored by their own government.

That transformation in America has come about in those same 7o years since the end of the war, a war when we–Americans and Russians, then the Soviet Union of course—had fought side-by-side to defeat Hitler and the Third Reich. Today the Government of the United States is siding with and backing neo-nazis in Ukraine to provoke Russia.

I reflected how much my countrymen have changed over those few decades. From the world’s most prosperous nation, the center of invention, innovation, technology, prosperity, in the space of seven decades we have managed to let our country be ruined by a gaggle of stupid and very rich oligarchs with names like Rockefeller, Gates, Buffett and their acolytes in the Bush dynasty. Those narcissistic oligarchs cared not a whit for the greatness of the American people, but saw us as a mere platform to realize their sick dream of world dominion.

We let that happen.

I’ll let you in on a secret that I recently discovered. The American oligarchs ain’t all-powerful; they ain’t some new Illuminati or gods as some try to convince us. They ain’t omniscient. They get away with murder because we allow them. We are hypnotized by their aura of power.

Yet were we to stand tall and clear in the open and say, “These silly would-be Emperors have no clothes!,” their power would evaporate like cotton candy in hot water.

That’s what they’re terrified of. That’s why they are deploying the US Armed Forces into Texas to stage war games aimed at US citizens; that’s why they have torn up the Constitution and Bill of Rights after 911. That’s why the Created a Department of Homeland Security. It’s why they try to terrify our citizens to vaccinate with untested Ebola or other vaccines. It’s why they are desperate to control free expression of political ideas in the Internet.

Now, when I reflect on the true state of America today compared with Russia, it brings tears. Today the economy of the USA is in ruins. It has been “globalized” by its Fortune 500 global companies and the banks of Wall Street. Its industrial jobs have been outsourced to China, Mexico, even Russia over the past 25 or so years. Investment in the education of our youth has become a politically-correct sick joke. College students must go deep into debt to private banks, some $1 trillion worth today, to get a piece of paper called a degree in order to look for non-existent jobs.

Our Washington government has become serial liars who have lied to us about the true state of the economy ever since Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War ordered the Commerce and Labor departments to find ways to fake the numbers to hide the developing internal economic rot. The consequence, followed by every president since, is that we live in a fairy tale world where the mainstream media tells us we are in the “sixth year of economic recovery” and have a mere 5.4% unemployment. The reality is that more than 23% of Americans today are unemployed but through clever tricks have been defined out of the statistics. Some 93 million Americans are unable to get full time work. It isn’t the fault of Obama or Bush before him or Clinton, Bush, Reagan or Jimmy Carter. It’s our own fault because we were passive; we gave them the power because we did not believe in ourselves enough. We let billionaires decide for us who will be our President and Congress because we no longer believed that we were good.
 

Scientific Playa

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By the same token, Russians today, amid brutal Western economic and financial warfare sanctions; amid a NATO war in Ukraine that has led more than one million Russian-speaking Ukrainians to flee to Russia for safety, despite the demonization in the western media of their country, exude a new optimism about their future. What makes Vladimir Putin so extraordinarily popular, with over 83% approval, is that he acts out that growing sense of representing that Russian soul, the people who are good, being just, being right, the sense that the vast majority of Russians today have.

That was overwhelmingly visible in the faces of the May 9 marchers. You could feel that Putin on the speaker’s podium felt it when he looked into the vast crowd. It was clear when Defense Minister Shoigu, a Russian-Mongolian Tuvan-born Buddhist, respectfully and humbly made the Orthodox sign of the cross with bowed head as he passed through the Kremlin’s Saviour Tower to take his place aside Putin. As Victor Baranets, a noted Russian journalist put it: ”At that moment I felt that with his simple gesture Shoigu brought all of Russia to his feet. There was so much kindness, so much hope, so much of our Russian sense of the sacred in this gesture.“ The legendary Russian Soul was manifest on May 9 and its alive and very well, thank you.

And that’s why I shed the tears on May 9, watching hundreds of thousands of peaceful Russians walk through their capital city, the city that saw the defeat of Napoleon’s army and of Hitler’s. I was moved deeply watching them slowly and deliberately walking into the Red Square next to their President’s residence at a time when Washington’s White House is surrounded by concrete barriers, barbed wire and armed guards.

You could see it in the eyes of the Russians on the street: they knew that they were good. They were good not because their fathers or grandfathers had died defeating Nazism. They were god because they could be proud Russians, proud of their country after all the ravages of recent decades, most recently the US-backed looting during the 1990’s Harvard Shock Therapy in the Yeltsin era.

I shed tears being deeply moved by what I saw in those ordinary Russians and tears for what I felt had been destroyed in my country. We Americans have lost our sense that we are good or even perhaps again could be. We have accepted that we are bad, that we kill all around the world, that we hate ourselves and our neighbors, that we fear, that we live in a climate of race war, that we are despised for all this around the world.

We feel ourselves to be anything but good because we are in a kind of hypnosis induced by those narcissistic oligarchs to be so. Hypnosis, however, can be broken under the right circumstances. We only have to will it so.

Postscript:

The last time I wept at a public event was in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and Germans—east and west—danced together on the symbol of the Cold War division between East and West, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy rang out. The German Chancellor made a speech to the Bundestag proposing the vision of a high-speed rail linking Berlin to Moscow. Then, Germany was not strong enough, not free enough from guilt feelings from the war, to reject the pressure that came from Washington. The architect of that vision, Alfred Herrhausen, was assassinated by the ‘Red Army Fraction’ of Langley, Virginia. Russia was deliberately thrown into chaos by IMF shock therapy and the criminal Yeltsin family. Today the world has a new, far more beautiful possibility to realize Herrhausen’s dream—this time with Russia, China and all Eurasia. This is what was so beautiful about the May 9 parade.


F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/05/13/why-i-wept-at-the-russian-parade/
 

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@Scientific Playa take it to the conspiracy thread with the rest of the psych op slop


:camby:

you have to be joking....

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics
 

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Name another Liggins hot I'm just honest.
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Russia jails three women over twerking video at WW2 memorial

North Korean leader 'will not attend Russia WW2 events'

Russian spacecraft Progress M-27M 'out of control'

EUROPE

Pollution, Prisons, Sickness, and Raves: Inside Russia's 'City of the Colorful Sky'

REPORT
The Short Life and Speedy Death of Russia’s Silicon Valley
In 2009, Moscow unveiled an ambitious plan to build a world-class technology incubator. Then corruption, brain drain, and Putin killed it.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/06...s-silicon-valley-medvedev-go-russia-skolkovo/

Russia's new high-tech Armata tank just broke down in the middle of a rehearsal parade

Russian spacecraft Progress comes crashing back to Earth and burns up on re-entry, agency says

More big wins for Putin! :blessed: He ain't gon stop. :umad:
 

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Ukraine's new law calls for demolishing monuments to erase its Soviet past

BY CHRISTOPHER MILLER18 HOURS AGO

An ideological spring cleaning of sorts is set to begin in Ukraine, after President Petro Poroshenko signed controversial legislation on Friday intended to rid the country of symbols from its Soviet past.

The legislation, passed by Parliament on April 9, condemns the communist authorities that governed from 1917 to 1991 as a criminal regime. It also bans all communist symbols and propaganda, which means thousands of monuments to Bolshevik Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet-era icons scattered around Ukraine must be demolished.

SEE ALSO: After war, Ukraine's soldiers face a fight with an internal enemy

Poroshenko's spokesman, Svyatoslav Tsegolko, called the move a "giant step forward for Ukraine."

Under the new laws, what Russians call the Great Patriotic War will now officially be known as the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, and state archives from the Soviet period, including those of its shady security services, are to be made public.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the legislation gives state recognition to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, an underground militia group created in 1942 that fought both the German and Soviet armies during World War II. Some of its members are believed to have collaborated with the Nazis in murdering thousands of Poles and Jews in western Ukraine.

Violators of the laws — who, for example, promote the hammer and sickle or publish material in print or in the media that denies the criminal nature of the Soviet regime — face up to five years' imprisonment.

The legislation applies the same treatment to the Nazi government, which invaded and controlled much of Ukraine during the war.

AP8947640874521.jpg


Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko laid flowers at a monument to World War II victims during the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, in Ukraine's capital Kiev on May 9.

IMAGE: AP PHOTO/SERGEI CHUZAVKOV

The laws have drawn heavy criticism from Russia, whose state-run media have pointed to other controversial laws passed by Ukraine's fledgling post-revolution government to show what they say are attempts by Kiev to exterminate the country's Russian and Russian-speaking population.

The bills have detractors in Ukraine, too.

Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group said Saturday that the "divisive and flawed" legislation "effectively criminalizes public expression of views held by many Ukrainians." She also warned last month that a populist move at a time when "unity is paramount" in Ukraine "will be used in propaganda against Ukraine, with some of that propaganda, unfortunately, being difficult to refute."

IMG_2390.jpg


Ukrainians celebrate the 70th anniversary of the victory over the Nazis at a war memorial in Kiev on May 9.

IMAGE: EVGENY FELDMAN, MASHABLE

The bills were also seen as controversial by 69 Western historians from Canada, the United States and Europe. They penned an open letter to Poroshenko urging him to veto it, a move that proved futile.

Ukrainians and Ukraine-watchers on Twitter voiced their concern, too.

The legislation is certain to inflame tensions between Kiev and Moscow over Russia's annexation of Crimea last year and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine at a time when the conflict there is just one act away from a return to all-out war.

More than 6,100 people have been killed since fighting erupted 13 months ago.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2015/05/16/ukraine-bans-soviet-symbols/


It's okay Putin will want statues of himself anyways


:heh:
 

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Ukraine crisis: 'Russian special forces' captured
  • 7 minutes ago
  • From the sectionEurope
_83056065_15b594e2-df54-4bc2-9870-312d36ba2cc6.jpg

Ukraine says rebel forces (pictured) are being helped by regular Russian troops
Six questions on Ukraine's ceasefire
Ukraine's military says its forces have captured two Russian soldiers fighting with rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The soldiers - which it said were members of Russia's elite special forces - were seized in the town of Shchastya, near the line of separation.

A video emerged apparently showing one of the soldiers saying during questioning that he was a sergeant from the central Russian city of Togliatti.

Russia denies claims that it is sending its soldiers to help the rebels.

However, it admits that a number of Russian nationals are fighting with the separatists in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in fighting which began in April 2014 when the rebels seized large parts of the two regions.

This happened a month after Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula.

'Special forces brigade'
On Sunday, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that the two Russian soldiers were captured by the volunteer Aydar battalion in Shchastya, Luhansk region.

He said this happened close to the front line, without giving further details.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashchenko posted a video purportedly showing the questioning of one of the seized soldiers, who was injured during the fighting.

_82587928_ukraine_rebel_forces_20150422_624map.gif

The soldier identifies himself as Aleksandr Aleksandrov - a sergeant in the third special forces brigade.

He says he was part of a 14-member group, naming the commander and his deputies.

The video has not been independently verified. Russia has not publicly commented on the latest developments.

Ukraine and the West have repeatedly stated than thousands of Russia's regular troops are deployed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Last year, the Kiev authorities posted a video apparently showing Russian paratroopers seized in the region.

Earlier this week, Russian opposition activists published a report, originally compiled by murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, alleging that 220 Russian soldiers had died in two key battles in eastern Ukraine.

The lull in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since February's ceasefire has been punctuated by frequent violations.

_75306515_line976.jpg

The situation in eastern Ukraine
  • Fewer clashes but still occurring daily, with intense fighting around port city of Mariupol
  • Ukrainian government says it has lost full or partial control of 28 towns and villages since February
  • Both sides accuse each other of building up weaponry for a new offensive
Will the ceasefire hold?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32776198
 

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Ukraine Releases Video to Prove Its Claimed Capture of Two Russian 'Special Forces'

By Liz Fields

May 18, 2015 | 1:20 pm
Ukrainian officials declared on Sunday that a pro-government volunteer battalion had captured two wounded Russian soldiers in the country's restive eastern Donbas region. Authorities interrogated the two men and have moved them to a hospital in Kiev.

Footage of some questioning was uploaded to YouTube and later posted to Facebook by Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashchenko. In the video, a purported sergeant of the elite Third Brigade of the Russian special forces gives his name as Alexandrov Alexander Anatolievich and says that he is a "military servant of the Russian Federation."

The captured fighter lies under an emergency thermal blanket throughout the nearly 9-minute video as he relays details to his captors about the 14-member unit that he had been fighting with in Ukraine's Luhansk region since May 6, according to subtitles provided by the Ukrainian government. He appears to name some of his fellow soldiers and says that he was injured after being noticed while conducting a surveillance operation in the southern part of Shchastya city. He goes on to suggest that there are seven to eight groups of contracted Russian soldiers working in the Luhansk region.

The subtitles at the beginning of the video name the second prisoner of war as the unit's captain, Yerofeyev Yevgeniy Vladimirovich.

Related: 'You Think It's Normal Carrying a Weapon in Here?': Divided Ukrainian Frontier Towns Brace for More War


VICE News has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the video. When reports asked Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to comment on the footage and the Ukrainian governments announcements, he said, "Both we and the defense ministry have repeatedly said that there are no Russian servicemen in Donbas."

Though Russian soliders are widely believed to be operating in eastern Ukraine, Russia has continually denied that it has sent soldiers or arms to assist pro-separatist forces. The country's government has so far conceded only that Russian volunteers might be operating in the region.

Related: Watch: Russia's Ghost Army in Ukraine (Full Length)

Meanwhile, a commander with the Luhansk People's Republic militia acknowledged the troops' capture and appeared to dispute their identification as Russian special forces, identifying them instead as Luhansk servicemen who had volunteered some months ago. He said that he has documentation that supports this.

Ukrainian authorities said that they would allow Ukrainian journalists to interview the detainees later on Monday. The chief of Ukraine's Security Service suggested the men would not be used in any hostage exchange with Russia, and would instead be "facing criminal responsibility," according to Interfax News Agency.





A pro-Ukrainian forces medic, Grigory Maksimets, told the Associated Press that he treated the wounded soldiers when they arrived at his intensive care unit at the hospital in Shchastya after their capture late Saturday. One man had apparently sustained a shoulder injury while the other had been wounded in the right leg, the medic said.

"They asked not to be sedated because they were afraid we would take their organs," he added.

Related: Russian Opposition Blames Kremlin Propaganda for Killing Boris Nemtsov

Kiev and the West maintain that Moscow has sent thousands of troops to assist with the separatist uprising in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions. A recently released 64-page report detailing Kremlin involvement in the conflict, undertaken by the assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov before he was gunned down near the Kremlin in February, has countered the government's denials.

The report, completed and released by Nemtsov's allies last week, alleged that at least 220 Russian soldiers died in two key battles in Ukrainian cities of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.



https://news.vice.com/article/ukrai...-russian-special-forces?utm_source=vicenewsfb

More than 6,100 people have been killed since the conflict began.
 
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