the times | Friday April 8 2022 2GM 13News
A band of neo-Nazi Russian mercenar-
ies led by a commander who boasted of
cutting the ears off enemy corpses has
been deployed in eastern Ukraine
before an expected assault.
Fighters for Rusich, a force affiliated
with the Kremlin-backed Wagner
Group, were photographed near the
Russian-Ukrainian border on Wednes-
day, crossing into the Kharkiv region
near the village of Pletenivka in
Z-marked vehicles.
The village is roughly 40 miles from
Kharkiv, the second city, where
Ukrainian defence officials expect a re-
newed assault by Russian forces in the
coming days.
Rusich, founded in St Petersburg in
2014 by Aleksei Milchakov and Yan
Petrovsky, is thought to consist of a few
hundred mercenaries whose insignia is
the valknut, an old Norse symbol ap-
propriated by white supremacists.
Rusich mercenaries have also been
photographed giving Nazi salutes.
They fought alongside pro-Russian
separatists in 2015 in Donbas, where
they developed a reputation for brutali-
ty. They were filmed mutilating and
setting fire to corpses, and Ukrainian
human rights groups have accused
them of torturing prisoners of war. Rus-
ich fighters were later deployed to Syr-
ia, where they were accused of crimes
including the dismemberment of a pris-
oner.
Milchakov, 30, and Petrovsky, 33, met
at a paramilitary training programme
run by the Russian Imperial Move-
ment, a white supremacist organisation
that has long called for the capture of
Novorossiya, a Tsarist term for south-
ern and eastern Ukraine.
Milchakov, who trained as a para-
trooper in the Russian army, leads by
example in his cruelty. His page on
Vkontakte, the Russian social media
site, once featured a photograph of him
cutting the head off a puppy as a teen-
ager. He has also posted pictures thatNotorious neo-Nazi
mercenaries fighting
for Putin in Kharkiv
Tom Ball show him removing the ears of dead
Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas and
carving the kolovrat, a swastika used by
the Slav far right, into their foreheads.
Milchakov boasted of these exploits in
a 2020 interview in which he freely
admitted to being a neo-Nazi and said
he “got high from the smell of burning
human flesh”.
Rusich reported casualties, including
Milchakov, as soon as it entered
Ukraine this week. Milchakov is receiv-
ing treatment and the militia is under
the command of Petrovsky, the group
said on the messaging app Telegram on
Wednesday.
Photographs showed Rusich soldiers
advancing towards Kharkiv, probably
from the Russian city of Belgorod. A
sign for Vovchansk, the name of a town
near Kharkiv, was defaced and changed
to Volchansk, the imperial Russian
name.
Rusich, whose name is a reference to
a mythical fortress in ancient Russia, al-
so published a cartoon of a Russian sol-
dier returning home with bloodied
looted gifts for his wife and son. The
caption read: “If you are a real man and
a Russian, join our ranks. You will spill
litres of blood from vile Russophobes,
and become rich and cool.”
The contracting of Rusich makes a
mockery of Moscow’s pretext for war
on the basis of “denazifying” Ukraine.
The Wagner Group, some of whose
fighters have also served with Rusich,
also has a long association with extrem-
ist politics. Dmitri Utkin, a senior Wag-
ner commander and former spetsnaz
officer, is thought to be a neo-Nazi. Last
year images surfaced of a man purport-
ed to be Utkin, inked with Waffen-SS
tattoos on his shoulder and a Reichsa-
dler eagle tattoo on his chest.
Wagner mercenaries were photo-
graphed for the first time in Ukraine
this week. A soldier was seen in front of
the Park Inn hotel in Donetsk, bearing
an AK15 assault rifle used by Russian
special forces. He had the group’s
grinning skull insignia on his uniform.yards from an elderly woman and her dogs, lies the aftermath of an airstrike, with the likelihood of bodies underneathNews
war crimes inquiry over Bucha
DANIEL CENG SHOU-YI ZUMA PRESS WIRERusich announced its involvement in messages on the encrypted Telegram appukraine in brief
Pink Floyd reunite
for protest song
David Gilmour and Nick
Mason of Pink Floyd have
reunited to release the
band’s first new music in
28 years to support the
people of Ukraine. The
pair have teamed up with
Nitin Sawhney and Guy
Pratt to release the track
Hey Hey Rise Up. It
features a recording of the
Ukrainian singer Andriy
Khlyvnyuk performing a
protest song in Sofiyskaya
Square in Kyiv last week.
Gilmour, 76, was inspired
after seeing Khlyvnyuk on
Instagram. “It was a
powerful moment that
made me want to put it to
music,” he said.
Read a review of the track
on thetimes.co.ukEditor attacked
with red paint
The Nobel prizewinning
editor of Novaya Gazeta,
one of Russia’s last
independent newspapers,
was attacked with red
paint in a train carriage
last night. Dmitry
Muratov, 60, had the paint
thrown at him as he
travelled from Moscow to
Samara. The attack was
reported by the
newspaper’s new Europe-
based spin-off. The paper
was forced to close in
Russia for violating the
Kremlin’s wartime
censorship. Muratov was
pictured covered in the
red paint. He said his
attackers told him:
“Muratov, this one’s for
our boys.”German animal
park renames pig
A Bavarian animal park is
to rename its Russian wild
boar, previously called
Putin. “Not even a pig
deserves that name,” said
Eckehard Mickisch, owner
of the Waldhaus
Mehlmiesel in Upper
Franconia. Mickisch does
not want to offend
Ukrainians, who enjoy free
entry. The park initially
accepted suggestions for a
new name from the public,
but after many requests
for Ukrainian leaders such
as Zelensky and Klitschko,
decided not to make a
political statement. Instead
they have put five options
to a public vote, including
“mir” the Russian and
Ukrainian word for peace.Borodyanka ‘even
more dreadful’
President Zelensky has
said that the situation in
Borodyanka is worse than
in Bucha, about 25km
away. “The work to clear
the rubble has begun... it’s
significantly more dreadful
there. Even more victims
from the Russian
occupiers,” he said in a
video on the Telegram
app. He did not provide
further detail or evidence
that Russia was to blame
for civilian deaths in the
town. Ukraine has said
that more than 300 people
were killed in Bucha,
about 50 of whom were
summarily murdered.
Images of dead bodies in
the streets there caused
international outcry.