Contrary to what some overheated keyboard warriors would have you believe, there are many Russians who have not only spoken out against the plundering of Ukraine - which started exactly two years ago today - but have openly assisted the Ukrainian side.
One of them was Maxim Kuzminov, who flew his Mi-8 helicopter across enemy lines, landed it in Ukraine, donated it to the enemy, and went into hiding.
And this week, right around the same time that Alexei Navalny was being murdered in the new Gulag, Kuzminov died under mysterious circumstances (wink wink) in Spain:
A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with his helicopter last year was found dead in an underground garage in Spain last week, his body riddled with bullets, Ukrainian and Spanish media reported on Monday.
Spain's state news agency EFE reported that a body found on Feb 13 in the town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante in southern Spain, belonged to pilot Maxim Kuzminov, who had landed in Ukraine with his Mi-8 helicopter last August. He had been living in Spain with a Ukrainian passport under a different name, it said.
A spokesperson for Ukraine's GUR military intelligence confirmed to Reuters that Kuzminov had died in Spain, but did not specify the cause of death. Ukraine's Ukrainska Pravda newspaper also reported that he had been found shot dead.
Spanish police have confirmed that a body was found of a gunshot victim in the town, but have not disclosed the victim's identity. A source at Spain's Guardia Civil police force told Reuters that the victim could have been living under a fake identity.
This is for from the first time that Russians who don’t toe the Kremlin Line have been targeted outside of Russia’s borders, and it is unlikely to be the last.
Germany appears to be just as much a den of Russian spies as it was in the eighties, when one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a KGB officer stationed in Dresden. And they’re watching their dissident countrymen:
In Germany -- which [writer Sergei] Lebedev describes as a "hub" for overseas Russians -- there have been a growing number of suspected cases of Kremlin critics being targeted.
In May, German police said they were investigating the possible poisoning of exiled Russians after an activist, Natalia Arno, reported health problems following a Berlin meeting of dissidents.
Meanwhile, Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko wrote in a Guardian article last month about how she fell ill last year after visiting Munich, and poisoning was suspected.
Talking about how Russians have been affected by a war started by Russia feels somewhat beside the point, considering that it is Ukrainians who have overwhelmingly suffered.
But even if it’s forced into a humiliating retreat from Ukraine, Russia isn’t going anywhere. Putin may not have much time left, but he didn’t emerge from a vacuum and hypnotize his entire country. I am skeptical of polls showing overwhelming domestic support for the special military operationᵀᴹ in Ukraine, but Putin definitely has at least half the country on board and likely more.
But he doesn’t have all of them. And the ones who do speak out need our support and protection. They’re Russia’s only hope - and ours, too.
Meanwhile, the government which insists it’s fighting Nazis in Ukraine has now launched its own Afrika Korps, replacing the mercenary group which was named after Hitler’s favorite composer:
A report this week by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) suggests that Wagner is back. Or rather that a new Africa-based militia is working for the Kremlin, offering corrupt African governments a ‘regime survival package’ in exchange for access to valuable commodities such as oil and gold.
[…]
The new army differs in one key respect from Wagner, however. It is openly part of Russia’s Forces, whereas Wagner was a mercenary army – until now, Putin has been too politically cautious to put Russian boots on the ground in Africa.
‘This is the Russian state coming out of the shadows in its Africa policy,’ says Dr Jack Watling, one of the authors of the RUSI report.
But the Africa Corps’s task remains the same as Wagner’s was: to secure Putin’s strategic and financial interests abroad. It is a vessel of Russian imperialism, looting governments of resources in return for military ‘assistance’ to shore up the regimes of despots and dictators.
People say Putin wants to bring back the USSR. They’re wrong. He is far more ambitious than that. It is not a return to the 20th century he seeks but the 19th, when imperial powers girdled the earth, hoovering up resources and killing those who opposed their larceny.
Thanks to Wagner, the vaults of Putin’s inner circle are already paved with sub-Saharan gold. According to the Blood Gold Report investigating mercenaries and mining in Africa, Russia has extracted £2billion worth of the previous metal from the continent in the past two years alone.
When Prigozhin was killed confusion descended on Wagner. It had been active in over a dozen countries in three continents since being established in 2014, but no-one now knew what would happen to the Kremlin’s most effective fighting force, or to Moscow’s interests in Africa.
Putin, however, understood he could not let the continent go. It was too lucrative — and too important in Russia’s war on the West — for Moscow to abandon it. So he stealthily started rebuilding an army for Africa.
Russia may be isolated from the West, but that leaves an awful lot of world which remains happy to do business with it.
Space Ice. Neil Breen. We needed this.
Note the subtle reference to Mr. Ice’s usual target, Steven Seagal, at 8:34. If you know, you know.