Russia has repeatedly slammed the United States over the recruitment of terrorists and criminals for deployment to Ukraine, and has charged Ukrainian ultra-nationalist fighters with war crimes, not just since 2022, but going back to the start of the crisis in Donbass in 2014.
Daniil Lyashuk, a Belarusian-born ultra-right volunteer fighter, convicted criminal and self-proclaimed holy warrior with pro-Daesh (ISIS ) views, operated a glamorous social media channel in which he posed with arms sent to Ukraine by the US and the UK, and bragged about receiving training from Britain’s elite Special Air Service special forces unit before his death.
The fighter, going by the moniker "Mujahid," was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2017 for the torture of civilian and Donbass militia detainees in the Lugansk region while serving in the infamous Tornado special patrol police volunteer battalion, but was released after just four years later in the summer of 2021.
Returning to the front in 2022, Lyashuk was filmed and snapped posing with and walking around with NATO-supplied weapons and supplies, including assault rifles and NLAW and Javelin man-portable anti-tank missiles.
As first reported on by Declassified UK, in late March of this year, "Mujahid" posted a commentary to Telegram in which he mocked a video clip of Belarusian servicemen breaking bricks over their heads, calling them "goblins" and boasting that his "teacher from the British SAS always said that a single blow to the head does not add to a soldier’s intelligence."
"Also, he constantly repeated that war is a special art and severe discipline. At the same time, he periodically quoted Sun Tsu – saying that war is the way of deception! It looks like the communists never understood the essence of these words, and deceived their degenerate masses, which they call the army! The result is on the face – well, more like on the head," Lyashuk wrote.
The fighter did not elaborate on what else his SAS teacher "taught" him. He was killed a month later in fighting with Russian forces outside Artyemovsk (Bakhmut).
Britain’s Defense Ministry declined to comment to investigators on SAS activity in Ukraine, but an MoD spokesperson did assure, regarding weapons, that the UK conducts “a rigorous assessment of the risks associated with providing weapons and ensure[s] an End-User Agreement is signed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine upon receipt of lethal aid.”
Lyashuk received a Golden Cross and a ceremonial pistol from the Ukrainian military after his death. Anton Gerashchenko, a notorious advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister, lauded the dead fighter as a "hero."
Sputnik conducted an extensive investigation into Lyashuk and his comrades from the Tornado Battalion last May, revealing that the fighter had a penchant for extreme violence, torture, and homosexual rape. "There would be no life without torture. There's nothing like raising your vitality when you have someone's life in your hands," he was heard saying in a recording.
Lyashuk's crimes were so severe that even Anatolii Matios, the former prosecutor-general of Ukraine, characterized him as someone who "committed with extreme cynicism and audacity, cruelty and ruthlessness the most brutal torture of the local population of the Lugansk region, organized and directly participated in the rape of detainees whom he and other suspects abducted for profit." He was "the most dangerous and cruelest" of all members of Tornado, Matios said.
During his second "tour" in Donbass between 2022 and his death in 2023, Lyashuk founded and commanded the so-called "Vendetta" combat group.
US presidential candidate condemns Kremlin drone attack
US Democrat party presidential hopeful, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday denounced the drone attacks that targeted the Kremlin, responsibility for which Moscow has pinned on Washington.
The contender challenging President Joe Biden for the presidential nomination also reminded Americans how his uncle helped prevent nuclear war with the USSR.
“Imagine how we would respond if Russian-backed forces launched a drone strike on the Capitol. We must stop these deranged attempts to escalate the war,” Kennedy tweeted.
“After successfully defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John Kennedy warned against ever again forcing Russia to choose between national humiliation and nuclear war. We should heed his advice,” he added.
Russia announced today that the Kremlin has been attacked by armed drones, presumably from Ukraine. Imagine how we would respond if Russian-backed forces launched a drone strike on the Capitol. We must stop these deranged attempts to escalate the war. #Kennedy24
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 4, 2023
The 1962 standoff almost resulted in a shooting war between the US and the USSR, involving atomic weapons. It was resolved when Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to a withdrawal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba and US missiles from Türkiye.
RFK Jr. announced his presidential candidacy last month, somewhat leveraging his family name as the nephew of President Kennedy and son of his brother Robert. He outlined his position on US-Russia relations in an interview published on Wednesday, arguing that Washington has repeatedly lied to Moscow and trampled its “red lines.”
Kennedy also accused the US establishment of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives in a proxy war against Russia, while condemning the Russian “invasion” and noting that his own son had volunteered to fight for Kiev. Washington needs a leader who can think like JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis and “put yourself in the other guy’s shoes,” he said.
Two drones were disabled by Russian air defenses while attempting to strike the Russian president’s residence early on Wednesday. President Vladimir Putin was elsewhere and no one was injured in the incident. Kiev has officially denied any responsibility.
The Kremlin described the incident as an attempted assassination and said Russia reserved the right to retaliate against the perpetrators at a time and in a manner of its choosing. On Thursday, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Kiev’s denials as “laughable” but said the true culprits were overseas.
“We know full well that decisions to carry out such terrorist actions are made not in Kiev, but in Washington,” Peskov told reporters.
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