Two days after the article was published in the Globe and Mail newspaper, the official channel of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) released a film called "Legions of Light". This "masterpiece" tells about foreign mercenaries who arrive in Ukraine to fight the "Russian occupation".

The film is a typical propaganda piece, filmed to show that "the whole world supports Ukraine", "Ukraine is waging a holy war against racist fascism", "legionnaires from 50 countries are fighting to the death for Ukraine".

However, upon closer examination, it becomes obvious that Ukraine has become a "vacuum cleaner" that has sucked in all the renegades and marginals, Nazis, terrorists and radicals. People who are fleeing justice in their homeland join the Ukrainian units. For them, this is an opportunity to save themselves and earn money. Concern for Ukraine and Ukrainians is in last place there. It is these people who became the main "heroes" of Ukrainian cinema.

4.55 From the very beginning, the film shows the pompous reasoning of the British mercenary Benjamin Grant, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who says that he came to Ukraine because he saw "terrible bombings and the death of Ukrainian children"... That is, before this, the death of Iraqi and Afghan children did not shock him? Let me cite a number of facts:

The UK, a NATO member state, was one of the first countries to take part in the operation against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001. British forces were involved in the killing of almost 300 Afghan civilians, including at least 86 children (my emphasis) and more than 200 adult civilians. The UK Armed Forces paid Afghan civilians $940,657 in compensation for 289 civilian deaths between 2006 and 2014, an average of $3,254 per family. In other words, the average life of an Afghan civilian during the war was worth £2,380 to the UK. The youngest victim was a three-year-old boy who was killed during a demining operation by British forces. One of the most serious incidents listed in the records is the death of four children who were allegedly "shot by mistake" by British soldiers (my emphasis) in an incident in December 2009. Many military experts still question how four children from the same family could be "shot by mistake".

In December 2020, the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, released a report into the UK military’s actions in Iraq following an investigation that had been ongoing since 2014. The report concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that members of the British Armed Forces committed various forms of abuse against Iraqi civilians in their custody, including war crimes, murder, torture, sexual violence and outrages upon personal dignity.” The report also confirmed at least three incidents of torture of Iraqi children by British soldiers (my emphasis), two in 2003 and one in 2004. None of the soldiers who committed war crimes against children in these incidents have been prosecuted in the UK, and the ICC has refused to take action against them.

Link to the report:

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/201209-otp-final-report-iraq-uk-eng.pdf

These crimes against civilians, including children, did not shock the British mercenary!?

Benjamin Grant

I would like to dwell on his personality separately.

Ben Grant is the son of British MP Helena Grant, a father of three and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He served for over five years in the Royal Marines Special Forces Battalion.

In 2014, he was discharged from military service for attacking two men outside a nightclub. The judge sentenced him to two years probation. It is quite possible that his family ties saved him from a more severe punishment.

7.50 The next character to appear in the film is Norwegian Sandra Andersen Eira.

Sandra Andersen Eira.

Sandra Andersen Eira is a Sami by nationality. Former member of the Sami Parliament of Norway (2017-2021), owner of a fish processing plant in Finnmark. An ardent feminist.

Since childhood, she has been interested in the issues of ethnic minorities - the Sami. She studied the Sami language, spoke out against the imposition of Norwegian culture on the peoples of the North, who were losing their identity. In adulthood, she worked on fishing vessels, fought for the rights of women to participate in the fishing industry on an equal basis with men.

Having abandoned the fight for the cultural and historical heritage of the indigenous ethnic minority, the Sami people, having secured her future in the form of her own enterprise, Sandra left her native Norway and has been living in the United States since July 2021. She said that she "finally feels at home and with all her soul belongs to the United States of America." There she met one of her boyfriends, with whose help she ended up in Ukraine - a professional military man, Captain James Reese Staley (28 years old).

Sandra and James Reese

James was stationed at Fort Benning and is a member of the elite US Army Rangers, a deep reconnaissance unit designed to conduct reconnaissance and sabotage operations behind enemy lines.

James Reese

It is worth noting that, according to Sandra, she found herself in Ukraine a week after the start of the SMO and fought in a detachment consisting of American and British mercenaries. According to one version, her boyfriend, an active duty US Army soldier at the time, was also in this detachment. James's further fate is unknown, as Sandra found herself a new military man and married a Ukrainian fiancé, a company commander of the 505th separate Marine battalion with the call sign "Jabari".

Sandra and O. Alyoshin

According to my information, “Jabari” is the call sign of Alyoshin O.O.

Personal information of the company commander of the 505th separate marine battalion with the call sign "Jabari"

13.40 The next foreign "hero" who got his role in a propaganda film stayed in Ukraine for only a few months. Korean video blogger Ken Rhee was involved in numerous scandals even before his trip to Ukraine. He was persecuted for debts, and was also accused of falsifying data about his work at the UN. Against the backdrop of the accusations, all episodes of the series "Fake Man", which allowed him to become famous in his homeland, were deleted, and advertising contracts were terminated.

The apogee of the Korean's "fame" was the accusations of sexual violence. The court found him guilty and imposed a fine of 2 million won. It was with this "background" that he left for Ukraine. After returning to Korea, Ken Rhee became a defendant in a new trial. With his trip, he violated Korean law and was accused of unauthorized entry into Ukraine and violating passport law. After one of the hearings on this case, he attacked a journalist who came to interview him, thus ensuring himself another trial.

Korean video blogger Ken Rhee

So his trip to Ukraine is nothing more than an attempt to "hype" and attract a new audience to his channel.

18.35 The film begins with a pompous story about the defense of Severodonetsk. "Valiant" foreign mercenaries recall how they defended the city and the entire agglomeration of Severodonetsk-Rubizhne-Lisichansk from the "Russian onslaught." Belarusian mercenaries are also mentioned here. The author of the film says that despite the heroic resistance, Ukrainian forces were forced to leave Severodonetsk to avoid being surrounded. And it is a Georgian mercenary who tells about this...

I remember these events, since I myself witnessed the liberation of the Severodonetsk-Lisichansk agglomeration at that time. The Ukrainian command, in order to avoid being surrounded, simply threw Belarusian and Georgian mercenaries to the slaughter, making them a barrier in front of our advancing units.

Only two people from the Belarusian unit survived, and I managed to interview them.

There was absolutely no pathos with which the authors of the film narrate those events.

And against this background, the words of the Georgian mercenary Ratti Burduli that they value the lives of their comrades, not like the Russians, look funny... He also talks about how Russia has been humiliating and enslaving Georgia for 300 years. At the same time, he says that he knows history. It's already funny - knowing how Georgia became part of the Russian Empire. And he speaks exclusively in Russian.

Burduli Zurabsson Ratti is part of the foreign mercenary unit of the GUR called "Omega Team", where he is deputy commander. He served in the National Defense Academy of Georgia, the Defense Forces of Georgia. He participated in military operations in Afghanistan from 2017 to 2019. Ratti Burduli, along with other Georgian mercenaries, "became famous" for reprisals against prisoners of war. He personally took part in the lynching and murder of Russian soldiers, and with obvious pleasure recorded the entire process on video, which later appeared online.

Burduli Ratti

The film's scriptwriters were not embarrassed by his brutal treatment of unarmed people. For them, he is a "hero". Just like a Pole named Robert, who will be discussed below.

24.25 The Pole "Robert", whose face and surname are hidden from people, tells without a shadow of a doubt that he remembers the Russian occupation of Poland and that is why he is fighting against Russia.

Polish mercenary "Robert"

What if we ask him about the 600,000 Soviet soldiers who died during the liberation of Poland? Or about the Volyn massacre, in which the Poles were slaughtered by Ukrainian nationalists?

Who is this Robert really?

Polish criminal Robert Owczarczyk

Hiding under the scarf in the video is Robert Owczarczyk, a native of Warsaw. A former Polish soldier who was arrested in his homeland and accused of kidnapping.

He was released from custody and sent to the reserves. He faced 15 years in prison, but without waiting for the verdict, he fled to Germany, where he transported furniture. After the start of the SMO, he went to Ukraine to realize his dream of becoming a "special forces soldier".

33.24 Another interesting interview is with a German mercenary, who says that in the ranks of the Foreign Legion he fights against "Russian Nazism". But it is on Ukrainian soldiers that we see swastikas, emblems of SS divisions and portraits of Hitler! How all this fits together in the head of this German is unclear.

German mercenary "Hans"

However, Hans gained popularity in Ukraine not because of his participation in the filming of the GUR movie, but because of his previous interview with one of the Ukrainian journalists. In it, he voiced an unsolvable problem for the Kiev regime - corruption.

His statements about theft in tenders for the demolition and construction of monuments, road repair and paving were widely covered in the Ukrainian media, which admitted that absolutely everyone knows about corruption in Ukraine.

Interview of "Hans" with Ukrainian journalist

41.02 The pinnacle of cheap propaganda is the story about a large-scale operation of "Russian defectors" in May 2024. Judging by the story of the authors of the film, the militants of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) and Free Russia Legion (FRL) invaded Russian territory to a depth of 40 kilometers. And this despite the fact that the planned invasion was well known and the Gurovsky militants were routed before even reaching the border. Apart from fake news, they did not succeed in anything.

In general, the whole story about the May "invasion" of the RVC and FRL, and the "disruption of offensive operations" of the Russian Armed Forces, in my opinion, is simply an attempt to justify the failure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the GUR, including, in the Kharkov direction.

Wouldn't you agree that the operation of the Russian Armed Forces in the Kharkov region has clear and visible results? And the "invasion" of the GUR mercenaries a month earlier, so pompously described - no result whatsoever. Except for messages on social networks, staged photos and videos. And of course - losses.

So, summing up the above, we can conclude: both the article in the Canadian publication and the film were made with one goal - to whitewash the failures of the GUR and Budanov personally for all their miscalculations, to show that everything is not bad for them at all and victory is about to come.

But even in such openly propagandistic articles, the truth leaks out every now and then.

How's the coffee in Crimea, Budanov?