Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[OUTLAW 09]

Kaur,
He looks like he means business even if he has an inferior weapon.

We made our EOD techs grow facial hair in the CAR to blend in.

Got to get with the local lingo if one wants to survive.

kaur---the article has some minor holes---how does a "so called" criminal on the run and evidently in the Crimea for a number of weeks not get arrested by the local police when they fell under Russian control especially when the Ministry of Interior is running the place or better normally Russians needed a passport to cross into the Ukraine which the Crimea was Ukrainian and normally when on the run as a criminal in Russia one normally does not have a passport as that requires checking in with the local police/Ministry of the Interior or if he had one then it would have been revoked---unless he was paying bribes to keep it.

Then this paragraph stands out:

As TIME reported last month, thousands of state-sponsored Russian Cossacks were then streaming into Crimea to aid the Russian troops with that invasion. For most of March, Mozhaev says, he was there along with some of the men from his Cossack battalion, the Wolves’ Hundred, helping in the siege of a Ukrainian military base near the city of Bakhchysarai and guarding a local TV tower.

NOTE: Was the Cossack BN paramilitary, a loose conglomeration of individuals or under Russian management?

In late March, after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, “we were sitting around down there and wondering what to do next,” he says. “So we decided to go conquer some more historically Russian lands.” Eventually he wound up in Slavyansk, where Ponomaryov was glad to welcome him into his separatist militia.

Sitting around takes money and food so who was supporting the BN?

kaur---also go to the inforesist.org link and check their listing ---you will see another individual the SBU names standing next to your bearded guy--then check the individuals background from 2013 to 2014.

This was written in the article and it comes from the SBU side concerning Cossacks.

From the identified militants, a few notes can be made from the following gunmen who appear to be connected to the raids in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk . For one, not all are from Russia. While some may be local radicals, others appear to come from Belorechensk in Russia, or have connections to related neo-Cossack groups. This does not necessarily exonerate Russian state involvement, however. While it’s been known that military veterans and Russian ‘tourists’ have been actively involved for some time, the presence of Registered Cossacks of the Russian Federation connects Russia officially to the ongoing crisis. Registered Cossack organizations enjoy financial and organizational support from the authorities, including monthly salary as police auxiliaries. This, of course, isn’t the first controversial deployment of Cossack forces, who made a name for themselves on the world stage enforcing the law in Sochi.