Direct translation
Edited
[Korrepondent] The KGB of Belarus said that the detained founder of the opposition portal Nexta Roman Protasevich took part in the hostilities in the Donbass as part of the Azov battalion. The founder of the volunteer unit of the National Guard, Andrei Biletsky, confirmed that Protasevich "was with Azov," but did not fight.
"Terrorist journalist"
On May 26, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, for whose arrest a Ryanair plane was forcibly landed , together with his accomplices, was going to "arrange a massacre and bloody mutiny" in the country.
"Now let his numerous Western defenders answer the question: what special services did this person work for? Not only him, but also his accomplice. Western defenders must answer the question: who paid him for participation in the war in Donbass? This is probably what they are afraid of Most of all. Therefore, they raised a howl. He has a great experience as a mercenary. These facts are known not only in our country and in fraternal Russia, but throughout the world, "he said.
Lukashenko noted that Protasevich was a mercenary and "a bastard who killed people in the south-east of Ukraine."
Later, the head of the KGB of Belarus Ivan Tertel said that Protasevich fought in the Azov regiment.
"It is indisputable that this person fully complies with the definition of a terrorist, a mercenary fighter, a participant in the bloody events in the infamous Azov battalion associated with the atrocities and deaths of civilians in southeastern Ukraine," he said.
Tertel noted that the data on this "presented in the media with personal confessions of Protasevich, which are widely available." According to the chief Belarusian security officer, the detainee "actively used" in Belarus the wholesale obtained in the Donbass.
On the eve of the first commander of the volunteer regiment, the leader of the Ukrainian party National Corps Andriy Biletsky, announced the attitude of Protasevich to Azov.
"I'll dot all the Is right away. Yes, Roman really, together with Azov and other military units, fought against the occupation of Ukraine. He was with us in Shirokino, where he was wounded. But his weapon as a journalist was not a machine gun, but a word," wrote Biletsky in Telegram on May 25.
Azov fought in the Mariupol area. The unit drove the militants out of there on June 13, 2014, and then defended the approaches to it after the Ilovaisk tragedy. In the fall of 2014, the battalion became part of the National Guard as a separate special forces detachment and has since remained part of the regular formations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.
Russia and its allies blame Azov for war crimes in eastern Ukraine, and many of his fighters are called neo-Nazis. The Russian authorities have banned the activities of Azov and the National Corps, and those suspected of participating in hostilities in the Donbas as part of a battalion are sentenced to real prison terms.
The Belarusian media have repeatedly reported about Protasevich's involvement in the Azov battalion in 2014-2015, when he was 18-19 years old.
"Protasevich is, to put it mildly, an interesting character. At first he gained some experience during the Ukrainian revolution, even participated in the ATO zone. Last summer and autumn, he introduced all this experience on the Belarusian information front," local television said on 23 May.
The co-founder of Nexta himself said that he came to the Maidan and was even seriously injured during another confrontation with the security forces.
Then, according to him, he met the future commanders of Azov. In the combat zone, he said, together with the battalion, he worked exclusively as a war correspondent, and rejected claims of participation in hostilities.
In recent days, several fakes have appeared about Protasevich's participation in the hostilities in the Donbass.
For example, the pro-Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy published the cover of the Black Sun magazine with a photograph of a guy in the uniform of an Azov battalion with a machine gun, claiming with reference to "separate face matching programs" that this is evidence against Protasevich.
However, the publication Insider writes that Shariy passed off another person for Protasevich - the Azov fighter Andrei Snitko, who died in August 2014 in the battles for Ilovaisk. In 2016, Snitko was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine.
The publication in its publication refers to the representatives of the battalion, as well as to the photographs of Andrey Snitko: they really resemble the image of the man on the aforementioned cover of the Black Sun.
Also in social networks, a clipping from the video of the TV channel Nowadays is distributed with the alleged father of Protasevich Dmitry. Of all the material, only one phrase was left: "criminal cases were opened against my son even when in 2014 he was in the territory of Donbass and fought on the side of the Ukrainian army."
However, the person in the frame visually and in voice does not look like Dmitry Protasevich, who recently gave several interviews. There is no indication of the time and circumstances of the shooting, and there is no link to the report from which this phrase was cut.
Zmitser Protasevich himself said in an interview with ERB that he knows nothing about his son's connections with the armed formations. Even if Roman Protasevich was in Donbass, the detainee's father notes, it was only as a freelance journalist.
The father of the Nexta co-founder is sure that in this way they are trying to denigrate him, putting an equal sign between a journalist and a terrorist.
The military journalist of the Russian edition of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Kots, who supports the separatists in Donbass, published several photos on his Telegram with an Azov fighter who looks like Protasevich.
He also cited an interview with a Belarusian volunteer under the call sign Kim, who, according to indirect data, can be mistaken for Protasevich.
On May 5, Roman Protasevich turned 26 years old. His Twitter profile reads "The first ever terrorist journalist." Protasevich is the first citizen in the history of Belarus, included in the official list of persons who may be involved in terrorist activities.
Roman Protasevich took part in protests against Lukashenko since the early 2010s - he was still a schoolboy. For the very first action he was expelled from the lyceum at the National Technical University, and he returned to a regular school.
He entered the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University, but he was also expelled from there.
Protasevich started working as a freelancer for several independent media outlets. In parallel, he wrote news for the Telegram channel, which he and another recent schoolboy Stepan Putilo created.
The Telegram channel was called Nexta (Nekhta - from the Belarusian "someone"), and at first it was a by-product, the main one was the channel of the same name on YouTube, and the teenagers planned to upload their music there.
In the spring of 2020, as the protest moods in Belarus grew, the channel began to enjoy more and more popularity. And in August, after the presidential elections, the number of Nexta readers in a few days increased from 300 thousand to 1.8 million people.
In terms of popularity, Nexta was second only to TUT.by, the country's main independent media outlet, which was read by 62 percent of Belarusians.
The channel actively covers protests against Lukashenko, for which the Belarusian authorities recognized him as extremist. Shortly before that, Protasevich announced his withdrawal from the project, began to conduct the Telegram-channel Belarus of the brain, which is also recognized as extremist in the Republic of Belarus.
In November 2020, the Investigative Committee of Belarus opened several criminal cases against Protasevich. He is accused of mass riots, organizing and preparing actions that grossly violate public order, as well as inciting racial, national, religious or other social hostility or discord.
On May 4, Lukashenko, by his decree, deprived the rank of lieutenant colonel of Roman's father, Dmitry Protasevich, who had served in the army for almost 30 years.
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday a journalist pulled off a plane that was forced to land in Minsk had been plotting a rebellion,
...that’d be Roman Protasevich...
and he accused the West of waging a hybrid war against him.
In his first public remarks since a Belarusian warplane intercepted a Ryanair flight on Sunday between European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2021 00:00 ||
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By Ruslan Trad Ruslan Trad is a Bulgarian journalist
In February 2018, people in the Russian town of Asbest were surprised to learn that several of their fellow citizens had died in Khasham, eastern Syria, 4,000 kilometers (2,489 miles) from home. When Maxim Borodin, the star news hound from the newspaper Novy Den (New Day), arrived in Asbest, the deaths were still shrouded in mystery. Asbest, in the Sverdlovsk region, is known mainly for its asbestos factories, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, the population in this industrial hamlet was hit hard. Residents lost their jobs, and to feed their families they increasingly turned to employment opportunities in private security for individuals and companies, a sector that has grown since the early 1990s, thanks to the associated risks of doing business in Russia’s nascent market economy.
Borodin was determined to find out what the men were doing in Syria and how they had died. He interviewed relatives and the commanders of the dear departed and attended their secret funerals. His resulting article provoked a national scandal and drew attention to a topic the Russian government had wanted to keep quiet: the use of private military companies (PMCs) to serve the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives and secure and protect the business interests of the kleptocrats in charge of Russia’s most lucrative resources. The article would be Borodin’s last.
On April 12, 2018, Borodin was found seriously injured and in a coma in his hometown of Yekaterinburg. Police say Borodin "fell" from his balcony while smoking. The day before, he had contacted a friend and told him that he’d spotted gunnies in camouflage near his apartment. Three days later, he was dead.
Through his investigation in Asbest, Borodin discovered that the dead had joined a mercenary force known as the Wagner Group, a PMC created in 2014 and financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and catering magnate close to President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... . While PMCs are technically illegal, private security companies are not. PMCs like the Wagner Group adopt the facade of a security company, but at the same time they have clear ties to Russian intelligence agencies such as the FSB (national security services) and GRU (military intelligence) and to both the Russian special forces and the army. In making the connection between the deaths of Russian civilians in Syria and their work with the Wagner Group, Borodin uncovered a tangled web of state, business, and security interests that are primarily concerned with preserving their influence and power.
There are a number of PMCs in Russia, but the Wagner Group typifies the way global business and geopolitics operate in Putin’s Russia. Mercenaries who work for companies like the Wagner Group provide security to sites (such as mines and oil fields) that are of strategic interest to the Kremlin and its kleptocrats. PMCs also perform such functions on behalf of foreign governments, and in this way, they have become an important tool for the Kremlin to promote its foreign policy objectives. For each of the key parties involved — the Kremlin, foreign governments, state industries, and private business interests — PMCs not only offer lucrative opportunities but, due to their quasi-legal structure, also provide plausible deniability for their clandestine activities. More at the link Continued on Page 47
#1
So, let me see if I got it right. Russia uses state supported mercenary companies, while USA uses it's regular military. Russia spends 1% of what USA does and actually gains influence instead of losing it (the local vermin in Afghanistan & ME used to fear USA - and then they found out that they can kill Americans with impunity).
And, do "Soviet Origins" in the title refers to the fact that Russia continues some of Soviet Union's foreign policies (which themselves were continuation of the Tsarist Russian Empire policies) - or are simply the author's way of expressing his disapproval?
#3
So they're not really as Soviet as they're capitalist? Anyway, PMCs are not thugs. They're professionals, mostly ex-military and bound by rules and agreements. Using professionals you can squeeze later is way better policy than lighting a fuse in some moslem buttholes and managing expectations later.
The state of democracy and the ineptitude of civv leaderships being what it is, I would say PMCs are the future. Hell, neighbourhoods in liberal democracies one day will contract PMCs to protect themselves.
Direct translation of the article
[REGNUM] Vaccination against coronavirus infection should remain voluntary, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting on economic issues on May 26 .
Follow the developments in the broadcast: " Coronavirus in Russia is a difficult situation, get vaccinated sooner "
"In my opinion, it is impractical and impossible to introduce compulsory vaccination, " the head of state said.
He noted that citizens themselves need to realize the need for vaccination and understand the danger they may face.
“This is especially true for older people,” Putin said.
At the same time, the president pointed out that in Russia the necessary conditions have been created for the vaccination to be safe.
According to the president, the coronavirus epidemic has revealed the main task of the authorities - to protect people.
A Facebook post by Russian military journalist Aleksandr Kots reveals Roman Protasevich's family ties in the Ukrainian Azov Regiment: By the way, the brothers of Protasevich with glasses from this photo are also a Belarusian sentenced to seven years in his homeland. Neo-Nazi Stanislav Goncharov fought in "Azov" from 2014 to 2016 He had the nickname "the car of terror".
Apparently he deserved it.
But he was convicted not of terror against Donbass residents, but of malicious hooliganism, incitement of racial, national or religious enmity, robbery and possession of pornography in order to spread through the Internet.
How such people appear in a republic where every fourth died in the Great Patriotic War See photos and a short video at the link
by Aleksandr Kots Kots is a Russian military journalist who writes and is a photographer for Komsomol Pravda
[KP]
“It happened on March 22,” says a fighter with the call sign “Kim” about his injury. - During a change in position on the right flank of the front line in the village of Shirokino, I came under fire from an enemy mortar battery, as a result of which I received a shrapnel wound in the chest. However, thanks to the professionalism of military doctors, I was back in the ranks a month later. "
The interview in the Belarusian edition “Nasha Niva” is illustrated with a photograph of a soldier with a worn-out face. But today the same photograph was distributed without retouching. On it - Roman Protasevich himself. In uniform and with weapons. If a month after being wounded he was back in line, it means that in May we were in the same place.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[EN.ALGHADEERTV.NET] Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday a journalist pulled off a plane that was forced to land in Minsk had been plotting a rebellion, 
By Ruslan Trad
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
By the way, the brothers of Protasevich with glasses from this photo are also a Belarusian sentenced to seven years in his homeland. Neo-Nazi Stanislav Goncharov fought in "Azov" from 2014 to 2016 He had the nickname "the car of terror". 
