Alex Rubinstein -- US lawmakers welcomed notorious Georgian warlord now boasting of war crimes in Ukraine

 

US lawmakers welcomed notorious Georgian warlord now boasting of war crimes in Ukraine

Top lawmakers in US Congress hosted Mamuka Mamulashvili, an infamous Georgian Legion warlord who has boasted of authorizing field executions of captive Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Alex Rubinstein 9 hr ago

9

This article was originally published on The Grayzone.

Having taken up arms against Russia for a fifth time, Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili has bragged on video about his unit carrying out field executions of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. 

While Western media pundits howled about images of dead bodies in the city of Bucha, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accusation that Russia is guilty of “genocide,” they have largely overlooked the apparent admission of atrocities by an avowed ally of the United States who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior lawmakers overseeing congressional foreign policy committees.

Mamuka Mamulashvili poses with then-House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel in 2017

Having fought in four wars against Russia, and despite allegations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, Mamulashvili has taken multiple trips to the United States, where he received a warm welcome from members of Congress, the New York Police Department, and Ukrainian diaspora community. 

In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.

“We will not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites [Chechnyan fighters]; in any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured,” Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters execute POWs.

The warlord’s battle dress shirt was emblazoned with a patch reading, “Mama says I’m special.” 

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast

Mamuka Mamulashvili, commander of the "Georgian National Legion" in Ukraine: "Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner."

April 6th 2022

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“Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner,” Mamulashvili emphasized

Executions of enemy combatants are considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Ukrainian and Georgian Legion fighters celebrate after executing captive Russian soldiers on video

War crimes on the front lines

Western governments continue to block a Russian request for a United Nations investigation into alleged massacres in Bucha, where scores of corpses were photographed following the Russian withdrawal from the city, some with hands bound and shot execution style – as Mamulashvili described doing to prisoners.

While the events in Bucha have become a source of outrage and heated contention, a clear case of war crimes by Ukrainian forces which took place just five miles down the road on March 30 as Russian troops withdrew has received a more muted response despite coverage by the New York Times.

The macabre footage shows Russian paratroopers dead or bleeding out in the road, some with their hands clearly bound — reportedly the handiwork of the Georgian Legion. 

Celebrating the ambush’s success, the videographer calls the attention of his fellow soldiers: “Georgians! Belgravia, boys!” Belgravia refers to a nearby housing complex from which some of the non-Georgian fighters presumably hail.

“Look, he is still alive,” one of the fighters says as a Russian writhes in a pool of blood. He was then shot three times at close range. 

Oz Katerji, a neoconservative British-Lebanese operative who has generated attention by sending threatening Whatsapp messages to journalists opposed to the US-backed dirty war in Syria, fantasizing about police torturing Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, hysterically heckling former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at an antiwar meeting, and embedding with CIA-backed armed gangs in Syria, wound up at the site of the Russian convoy two days after it was destroyed. 

Filming himself against the backdrop of numerous burned out Russian tanks, Katerji tweeted that soldiers told him “they had removed eight Russian corpses from the battlefield yesterday.” 

Alex Rubinstein -- A Cult, a Fake Gov't & US-funded NGOs Hold Panels Panning China

 

A Cult, a Fake Gov't & US-funded NGOs Hold Panels Panning China

Plus the bizarre story of Human Rights Watch's China Director's intro to activism.

Alex Rubinstein Aug 7 9 3

A young woman poses for a photo at the Falun Gong booth at the IRF Summit

This is part two of a three-part investigation into the IRF Summit. The first part is available here.

My experience attending panels at the three-day IRF Summit in Washington, DC was limited to ones focusing on the alleged crimes of China, which I believed were the most interesting from a geopolitical perspective. Heavily involved in these events were organizations and individuals with close links to the US government, some having worked for it, as well as powerful think tanks, human rights NGOs and foreign separatist movements. One fugitive who spoke on a panel had previously served as a spokesman for a now-defunct separatist group that included in its ranks a man who plead guilty to harboring explosives.

Meanwhile, an official of the Central Tibetan Administration spoke candidly about the goals of Congress in pushing for a US consulate in Tibet.

In all, the IRF Summit featured 35 roughly one-hour “concurrent breakout sessions,” of which seven were about China, accounting for one-in-five of them. Additionally, much of the “plenary sessions,” which went on much longer and were hosted in the metal detector-protected Regency Ballroom, focused substantially on China.

Breakout sessions focused on China included “Forced Organ Harvesting and Global Impact,” “Boycotting the Beijing Olympics,” “Chen Guangcheng Speaks about Religious Freedom in China,” “China’s Criminalization of Islam in East Turkestan: The Policy Agenda,” “Religious Freedom and Rule of Law Under Xi Jinping,” “Persecution of Tibetans’ Religious Freedom,” and “Taiwan: A Leading Voice for Religious Freedom.” 

Alex Rubinstein -- Top Democrats Unite With Christian Far Right to Bash China

 

Top Democrats Unite With Christian Far Right to Bash China

Religious freedom: the new front in the New Cold War.

Alex Rubinstein Aug 6 21 4

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken addresses the IRF Summit

“As Speaker of the House it is an honor to bring greetings to the 2021 International Religious Freedom Summit.” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

“The fact that we gathered here today well, genocide is ongoing in China and other places around the world demonstrates the hard work of each of you matters.” — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

“It's been an honor to be with you and I thank you for all you’re doing. Now let's work together on this vital cause.” — USAID Director Samantha Power

“I'm delighted to join the inaugural International Religious Freedom summit.” — Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

“We've got to, as a country, we've always got to stand with the friends of freedom and to advocate for the right of peoples to be free. When it comes to China, we have to oppose their imperial ambitions.” — Senator Josh Hawley

“I said it at the time and I'll reiterate now, if the Chinese Communist Party thinks my actions today can warrant sanctions against me, just wait.” — Senator Tom Cotton

Using a friend’s company on my application and adopting a fake persona, I attended a three-day summit on religious freedom where leading figures in the Democratic Party including Nancy Pelosi, USAID Director Samantha Power and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken joined up with anti-gay Evangelicals, a slew of shady NGOs and multiple bonafide cults to ratchet up pressure against China.

Attendees and speakers were at ease throughout the week; a member of a prominent Evangelical organization and a representative of the Central Tibetan Government made shocking admissions to me about their aims in China.

Inside the three-day inaugural International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit, which organizers and attendees pronounced like “smurf,” there was a wide diversity of peoples but far less variance in talking points. The wickedness of the Chinese Communist Party was constantly discussed. While lip service was paid to Yezidis and Rohingyas, the so-called “religious freedom summit” was little more than a CCP hate-fest and China’s alleged crimes against “religious believers” took center stage. 

Hosted at the opulent four-star Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, DC (the first conference hosted there since the start of the coronavirus pandemic), the hottest topic at the summit — dubbed the “Davos of religious freedom” by co-chair Sam Bronback — was regime change and Balkanization in China. The affair laid bare the true aims of the human rights industrial complex and featured the majority of the network working to bring down Beijing. Russia and China were frequently invoked as evildoers against religious believers, and terms like “genocide” and “never again” were tossed around casually.

Interpolated between tirades from high-level US government officials attacking China were a plethora of “survivor testimonies” — the closest thing to any actual evidence of China’s crimes presented at the summit. 

The lobby of the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, DC