4 hours agoRussia pays mercenaries to fight in Syria, but that's the trick they made (Photo)
Periskopi(9 years ago)
(9 years ago)The president's office warns against reports, but says it will check whether captives in Deir Az Zor are Russian citizens. Official Moscow has said media reports claiming two Russian soldiers were captured by I SIL in Syria “is difficult to confirm if they are Russian”, reports “Al Jazeera”, broadcast [...]
Official Moscow has said media reports claiming two Russian soldiers were captured by I SIL in Syria “is difficult to confirm if they are Russian”, reports “Al Jazeera”, Periscopi broadcast.
Dimitri Peskov, the Russian presidency's press secretary, said Wednesday that reports should be watched carefully but confirmed that Russian authorities were controlling whether the two captives are Russian citizens.
Peskov's statement came in response to a video released by Iraq's Islamic State and the Levant Group ( ISIL, also known as I SIS on Tuesday, showing that the armed group claimed there were two Russian men captured in the village of al-Shalo in Deir Az Zor province in eastern Syria.
In the video posted on the ISILY's Amak website, a man speaking Russian identifies himself as Roman Zabolotny from the Rostovskaya region and says he's caught by I SILY was during an offensive in a village, along with the man sitting next to him, whom he identifies as Grigory Tsurcanu from the Domodedovski region.
On Tuesday evening, Russia's defence ministry said in a statement to Russian news agency “RIA” that none of its military personnel stationed in Syria had been captured.
According to Russian media reports, Zabolotny is a member of a group of co-zayska yurta. The special organisations are nationalist paramilitary formations and are regulated by a special law in Russia.
In August 2016, Russian media RBK reported that the use of Wagner mercenaries had cost Russia up to $170m since October 2015.
Maria Okunva, a defence ministry spokeswoman, told “Alzeera” could not comment whether Zabolotny and Tsurcanu belong to Russian military personnel.
Russian mercenaries?
According to Ruslan Leviev, a Moscow-based military scholar with the Conflict Intelligence Team, the two men are likely to be Russian mercenaries who were sent to fight at Deir Az Zor.
He told “Al Jazeera” that Russia supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces using mercenaries, who are mostly Russian citizens, on the front lines of the Syrian war. By putting them in heavy battles.
The deaths of mercenaries are not officially reported, but according to Leviev, they may be hundreds of things that official Moscow does not report their numbers. /Periscopi/
