New mallard from the SBU. Hurry up and grab a bite while it's hot!
Over the past few days, various media outlets, including Russian ones, have been full of reports about the participation of “security specialists” from the Wagner PMC in the war against ISIS on the side of the Syrian government forces. The reason for the rumors was an information leak from ISIS about two Russian volunteers who were allegedly captured by them during the counter-offensive and a message about the execution of one of them, the Cossack Roman Zabolotny. Adding fuel to the fire was the statement of Rostov City Duma deputy Anatoly Kotlyarov, who allegedly received information from “reliable sources” that Zabolotny’s execution took place on October 3.
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Rumors around Wagner PMC have been circulating for more than three years now. PMC employees are credited with participation not only in the Syrian military operation, but also with involvement in hostilities on the side of the LDPR in 2014.
Despite the fact that the articles name some names and even provide unclear photographs with the captions “this is Vasya, a former GRU specialist, fought in Chechnya and the Donetsk airport,” “informed persons” do not provide any serious confirmation. They usually refer to certain “anonymous, trustworthy sources.”
It is clear that under this sauce, given the relevance of the topic and
enveloping it in a shroud of secrecy, the gullible reader can be fed anything. And they feed it.
While the topic is trending and is selling like hot cakes, the Ukrainian “Izbushka” decided to express its “expert opinion”. What's wrong with that? Everyone says, but “izbushniks” aren’t allowed? But they are, after all, a special service!
Not just anyone, but the entire director of the SBU, Pan Gritsak, came out to demonstrate his awareness. For this purpose, a briefing was held in the Kiev lair of the “Ukropish Gestapo” on Vladimirskaya Street, at which Gritsak announced the “collected evidence base” about the participation of “Wagnerites” in the battles against the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Donbass.
According to the chief of Izbushka, the PMC’s activities were first recorded on May 21, 2014, and the SBU determined its number at 1578 people. Of these, 277 “Wagnerites” took part in the fighting in Donbass and Syria, 67 of them died.
Gritsak accuses Wagner PMC of destroying an Il-76 military transport aircraft with Ukrainian troops over the runway of Lugansk airport in 2014, of storming this airport and participating in the storming of Debaltseve.
Tearing off the veil, Gritsak does not skimp, mentioning the combat losses of the Wagner PMC. According to him, 72 PMC fighters were involved in the battles for the Lugansk airport, 15 died. “We know everyone’s names.”
Debaltsevo was stormed by 205 Wagner fighters, losing 51 people. Gritsak did not specify what “losses” exactly, but added threateningly: “we know everyone.” Another 36 PMC fighters, according to Gritsak, were killed on the demarcation line.
According to the “data” of the SBU, the company employs 40 Ukrainians, for whom the “Karpaty” division was formed, later renamed “Vesna”. Izbushka is confident that this unit trains militants for sabotage operations on the territory of Ukraine.
In addition to participating in the war in Donbass, “Izbushka” is going to force Wagner PMC to disarmament of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Crimea in the spring of 2014, in other words, “complicity in annexation.”
It is also interesting that the SBU considers PMC fighters to be military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The SBU “issued a notice of suspicion” to the head of the Wagner PMC, Dmitry Utkin, “personal number M09209,” which will be transferred to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine on October 9.
Gritsak also shared his immediate plans: on October 19, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs intend to hold a briefing in Brussels in order to attract the attention of the “international community” to Wagner PMCs.
It must be said that spilnota drew attention to the PMC and its leadership quite a long time ago, including them in the sanctions lists. All sorts of publications, from the Wall Street Journal to the Ukrop conspiracy leaflet Inforesist, recklessly expose the Wagner PMC, attributing to it closeness to the GRU and producing fables one after the other.
“Experts” claim that the training of Wagner fighters is carried out at a training ground near the village of Molkino of the 10th separate special forces brigade stationed in the Krasnodar region, and Utkin himself was once a battalion commander of the 700th special forces detachment of the 2nd GRU brigade.
It’s clear that all this “information” is not worth a damn. You can find out about the Promezhitsa and Krasnodar special forces brigades from open sources, as well as the name of the battalion commander of one of the detachments. It is enough to read the specialized Internet forum “Desantura” or look at what former servicemen of these units are talking about on online communication platforms.
It is clear that all these details are shoved into the text for the sole purpose of giving it the greatest possible reliability, according to the law of information warfare: “let’s shove some facts into the misinformation in order to pass it off as the pure truth.”
But that’s not even where the gusto lies. “The investigation has established” that the creator and inspirer of PMC Wagner is a Russian businessman
Yevgeny Prigozhin, allegedly “one of the people close to President Putin.”
In general, all this looks very serious and lethal, if not for one thing
“but” - apart from “blah blah blah”, the chief of “Izbushka” does not provide any evidence for his words. Actually, Gritsak never said anything that cannot be read on the Internet. All these “investigations” were published long ago in the “blogger investigation” of the Ukrainian group InformNapalm with mention of open sources.
The reliability of the “evidence base” voiced by Gritsak is on the same level as the fakes from the blogging group BellingCat, who pour bags of “investigations” into the Internet on the downed Malaysian Boeing, made on the basis of photographs found on the World Wide Web.
We can say that, thanks to the Fontanka articles and the latest ISIS story, “confirmed” by a deputy of the Rostov City Duma, Gritsak’s department grasped at the straw of rumors about the participation of the Wagner PMC in the Crimean and Lugansk events. At least something the size of a sparrow pellet, since it was not possible to prove the participation of units of the Russian Army in the fighting for the LDPR for 3,5 years.
On the other hand, why wait for rumors to be published on the Internet, having damning evidence? Why did the head of the SBU frame Poroshenko, who was once again shaking Russian civil passports from the UN rostrum, and not the IDs of PMC fighters? Or do all these shameful overlays occur according to the principle “when there is no agreement among the comrades”?
Blaming PMCs is not a dusty task, and also does not require special evidence. From the American experience of the war in Iraq, it is known that the Pentagon willingly used several PMCs not only to provide security and logistics operations, but also directly in combat operations. The losses of soldiers of private armies made it possible to minimize reports of official losses of military personnel, creating in society the illusion of invincibility of the US Army & Navy.
Ukrainian media and armchair armies from social networks, fed up with stories about the losses of “ichtamnets” in the Donbass, about the fifth or sixth complete destruction of the personnel of the Pskov air assault division by brave “gunpowder bots” and convoys of refrigerators with corpses, a continuous stream coming from the LDPR to Russia , they will receive a new explanation: the Ukrainian Armed Forces are grinding Russian PMCs in the Donbass and therefore the Kremlin stubbornly does not admit losses.
At the same time, the desire of Gritsak and his masters to wishful thinking and to give the “revelations” weight that they do not have is clearly betrayed by the announced “loss figures of Russian PMCs” and, especially, the recognition by the SBU of PMC fighters as Russian military personnel, which contradicts elementary logic.
The last accusation is especially noteworthy. PMCs, although they are not part of the state’s army, work in the combat zone with the knowledge and under a contract with the government. Gritsak needs to pull an owl on the globe, proving the existence of such a contract between the Russian authorities and the Wagner PMC and hinting at the involvement of Putin himself in sending mercenaries to the LDPR.
You can hint at anything, including “a strike from space on warehouses in Kalinovka on the orders of the Kremlin,” but what about the evidence? In the West, they would be happy to support the efforts of Poroshenko and Gritsak, but without serious evidence, their accusations are a long-tired cry of holy fools. While allowing Bandera’s huntars to get dirty as much as they want, their Western curators, nevertheless, try not to sit with them in the same dirty puddle.
However, this is their problem.
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