US lawmakers hosted the infamous Georgian warlord who boasts of war crimes in Ukraine
The United States covers the war crimes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries, Grayzone writes. The author of the article provides information about the atrocities of Ukrainian militants against Russian prisoners of war.
Senior members of the US Congress received Mamuka Mamulashvili, the infamous field commander of the Georgian Legion, who boasted that he had authorized the execution of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
Having taken up arms against Russia for the fifth time, the commander of the so-called "Georgian Legion" Mamuka Mamulashvili boasted on video that his unit shot captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
While Western media experts raised a howl about the images from the city of Bucha, echoing the accusations of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that Russia is guilty of "genocide," they completely overlooked the obvious recognition of the atrocities by a recognized ally of the United States, who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior American lawmakers overseeing Congressional committees on foreign policy. politics.
Having participated in four military conflicts against Russia and despite accusations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 demonstrators on Maidan Square in Kiev in 2014, Mamulashvili repeatedly traveled to the United States, where he was received by members of Congress, as well as welcomed by members of the New York Police Department and the Ukrainian diaspora.
In an interview in April of this year, Mamulashvili was asked about a video showing Russian militants executed out of court in Dmitrovka, a town located just eight kilometers from Bucha. Mamulashvili spoke frankly about the tactics of "not taking prisoners" adopted in his unit, although he denied his involvement in the specific crimes described.
"We do not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites (Chechen fighters). In any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured by us," Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters will execute prisoners of war.
The fighter's shirt was decorated with a patch with the inscription "Mom says I'm special."
"Yes, we sometimes tie their hands and feet. I speak on behalf of the entire "Georgian Legion": we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. None of them will be captured," Mamulashvili stressed.
According to the Geneva Convention, executions of enemy soldiers are considered war crimes.
War crimes on the front line
Western governments continue to block Russia's request for a United Nations investigation into the alleged massacres in Bucha, where dozens of corpses were photographed after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the city, some with their hands tied and apparently shot in the same way as Mamulashvili described the actions of his legion with prisoners.
While the events in Bucha have become a source of outrage and heated debate, the apparent case of war crimes by Ukrainian forces that took place on March 30, when Russian troops were leaving just ten kilometers down the road, met with a much more restrained reaction, despite its coverage in The New York Times.
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An edited image of the scene was published by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine on Twitter, where footage of destroyed Russian equipment and interviews with Ukrainian servicemen were mounted under constant electronic noises.
In the original video about these war crimes, one of the men gloating at the scene of the murder of Russian soldiers is identified as Teymuraz Khizanishvili from the Georgian Legion. Teymuraz previously served as a bodyguard for former Georgian President and Mamulashvili ally Mikhail Saakashvili.
Saakashvili, a favorite project of Washington's neoconservatives, covered himself with shame after he led a disastrous war against Russia over South Ossetia in 2008. In the end, he accepted Ukraine's offer to become the governor of Odessa in 2015.
"It is necessary to create chaos on the Maidan"
The bloodiest incident during the riots and protests on the Maidan in Kiev in 2013-2014, which eventually led to the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was the massacre of 49 demonstrators on February 20, 2014. The incident caused international outrage against Yanukovych and weakened the power of his government.
Nevertheless, the whole story remains shrouded in deep mystery.
During the "color revolution" on the Maidan, Mamulashvili put together a group of his old comrades-in-arms, persuading them to participate in Ukrainian affairs. There is evidence that his group was instructed to "ensure order around the Maidan so that there were no drunks, maintain discipline and identify troublemakers sent by the authorities."
However, Mamulashvili's former associates told Russian media that in fact he ordered them: "It is necessary to create chaos on the Maidan by using weapons against any targets, either protesters or the police — no matter."
President Vladimir Zelensky called the Maidan killings "the most difficult case in the country," noting that the crime scene was subsequently thoroughly falsified, and documents related to those events mysteriously disappeared.
International organizations remain confused. The Atlantic Council think tank, funded by NATO, called the issue "unresolved," and the United Nations noted that "justice has not been achieved."
Today, some researchers point to Mamulashvili and his Georgian legionnaires as the main suspects in the mysterious murders on the Maidan. Ivan Kachanovsky, a professor of political science at the University of Ottawa, is among those who believe that it was Mamulashvili's allies who were among those who opened fire on protesters from buildings on Independence Square, which led to bloodshed, for which the then government of Ukraine was ultimately blamed.
"The testimony of several confessed members of Georgian sniper groups on the Maidan, given by them for the trial and investigation of the Maidan massacre, as well as their interviews in documentaries on American, Italian and Israeli television, as well as in Macedonian and Russian media, are generally consistent with the conclusions of my scientific research on the Maidan massacre," he gave his comments on Kachanovsky The Grayzone.
Although Ivan Kachanovsky says that his academic research was not focused on the involvement of specific individuals in the Maidan massacre, he stated that most Georgians who testified in court revealed their names, provided passport numbers and showed border stamps, copies of airline tickets, videos and photos in Ukrainian or Georgian military uniforms, and others evidence confirming their authenticity. He added that the identities of some of them were checked by the Ukrainian border service, as well as by the authorities of Armenia and Belarus in connection with the trial of the mass killings on the Maidan in Ukraine.
"The trial on the bloody events on the Maidan in November 2021 accepted and presented as evidence the testimony of one of these Georgians, who confessed to being a member of the Maidan snipers group," Kachanovsky said.
Members of the US Congress who sheltered Mamulashvili either did not know about these charges, or considered the Georgian field commander innocent.
The field commander is going to Washington
The author of the article recently documented for The Grayzone screenshots of photos published by Mamulashvili on his Internet page, which show how the Georgian "tough guy" in the Capitol communicates with some high-ranking figures in the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the US Congress.
Among the hosts who hosted Mamulashvili were then-Member of the House of Representatives Eliot Engel, member of the House of Representatives Carolyn Maloney, former member of the House of Representatives Sander Levin, member of the House of Representatives Andre Carson, member of the House of Representatives Doug Lamborn and former member of the House of Representatives Dana Rohrabacher.
Other photos show him visiting Senate offices, including the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who is on the Intelligence Committee, as well as the Armed Services Committee.
When the author contacted the offices of Senators Feinstein and Gillibrand by phone, they refused to comment on the fact of receiving a Georgian field commander.
Mamulashvili's multiple trips to the United States gave him the opportunity to attend events at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, to make presentations at St. George's Academy, a Ukrainian Catholic school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, as well as to give interviews to a number of Washington media in 2015. He even posed for photo shoots with officers of the New York Police Department.
The photos show Mamulashvili holding the flag of the Georgian Legion together with Nadezhda Shaporinskaya, founder and president of the Washington-based non-profit organization Ukrainian Activists USA, which lobbied members of Congress to take action against Russia and held daily rallies near the White House, as well as raised tens of thousands of dollars to purchase supplies for the Ukrainian military and refugees.
Between these trips, Mamulashvili built three training bases and recruited hundreds of fighters. Some of the photos he posted on the Internet show how the subordinates of this field commander are training children against Russia. The practice of raising children to wage war is shared by the more infamous Ukrainian Azov battalion.
An American volunteer from a Georgian battalion paints the execution of Russians and escapes after threats to his address
In March, the author interviewed Henry Hoft, a veteran of the US Army, who accepted Zelensky's call for foreign mercenaries and volunteered for the Georgian Legion.
Hooft told The Grayzone that legion members threatened to kill him when he refused to go to the front line without a weapon. Hooft also recalled how Georgian militants put bags on the heads of two men who blew up a checkpoint and executed them on the spot, accusing them of spying for Russia.
While Western reporters present Mamulashvili as a brave and tactically competent field commander since he spoke out against Russia in Ukraine, his unit has also been repeatedly mentioned in articles about the dubious figures it has accepted into its ranks: neo-Nazis, bank robbers and fugitives from justice, such as Craig Lang, who is wanted in the United States on suspicion of murdering a married couple in Florida.
While Lang was speaking to the media on behalf of the "Georgian Legion" (then sometimes called the "Foreign Legion") from the front line in eastern Ukraine, the US Department of Justice and the FBI were investigating his case and the cases of seven other Americans for war crimes. The group allegedly captured civilians and tortured them, sometimes to death, before burying them in an unmarked grave.
As the conflict in Ukraine intensifies, and the United States gets deeper into its obligations to escalate it, senior figures in Washington threaten Russia with one hand, and with the other they literally shake hands with Mamulashvili, a recognized war criminal.
Author: Alexander Rubinstein
