Russia Has Strong Suspicions of US Mercenary Activity in Ukraine – Lavrov

[Purveyor]

MOSCOW, May 14 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow believes information that Western, first and foremost American, mercenaries are operating in Ukraine to be true, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

“We are waiting for answers, because we … have very strong suspicions that this might be true,” Lavrov said during an English-language interview with Bloomberg.

He added that Russia has always sought to ease concerns and answer questions that arise in the international community. At the same time, the country’s Western partners and the government in Kiev chose to keep silent on issues that are of concern for Russia.

“The questions that we asked remain unanswered,” Lavrov said.

According to Lavrov, information on mercenaries from US security companies in Ukraine appeared in the press earlier, but Washington has always denied this. The same information has begun appearing again.

more...

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140514/189824222/Russia-Has-Strong-Suspicions-of-US-Mercenary-Activity-in-Ukraine.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. Rumors of American mercenaries in Ukraine spread to Germany

BERLIN — In eastern Ukraine, among pro-Russian separatists, the notion that elite American fighters are prowling the backroads and slag heaps of their region is oft-repeated. After first surfacing in March, the rumors sounded like the sort of paranoid fantasies created in a war zone where anti-Americanism is rampant.

But now the rumors are being repeated in Germany’s capital — and resonating. That alone may count as a victory for Russian propagandists, even if there are no American mercenaries. The White House says there are not.

Bild am Sonntag, a tabloidlike newspaper that occasionally breaks major stories on the German government, is reporting that German intelligence has told Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office that it had unconfirmed reports that 400 Americans appear to be aiding the interim Ukrainian government in its fight against pro-Russian separatists. According to Bild, the German intelligence agency cited U.S. intelligence officials as its source.

The report, which appeared Sunday, has since been repeated by many German news outlets. The allegation that the information was presented to the chancellor’s office in a weekly briefing in April lends it gravitas. That such reports in Bild on more than one occasion have proved true enhances its credibility. The chancellor’s office and the German intelligence service have declined to either confirm or deny, a development that leaves an atmosphere of doubt in a country where tensions are rife about just how angry Germany should be at Russia’s actions in Ukraine — fueled in no small part by German reliance on Russian natural gas and oil and the extensive business ties between the two nations.

http://www.stripes.com/news/europe/rumors-of-american-mercenaries-in-ukraine-spread-to-germany-1.283154

[Iterate]

2. A recycled fake story

Russia This Week: Propagandists Recycle American Mercenaries Hoax
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-what-do-polls-measure-in-russia/

May 13, 2014
0710 GMT: Voice of Russia, the Kremlin’s propaganda outlet on radio and the Internet, has decided to wheel out the “American mercenaries in Ukraine” story once again. We traced the last round of this story here, and pointed out that the numbers had morphed from 1,000 to 300 to 150 mercenaries, and been sourced variously in the Russian ambassador and the Russian Foreign Ministry — but was never found to have any substance whatsoever. There was not a single eye-witness report, citizen’s YouTube, Instagram photo or tweet proving the existence of anything remotely like such persons.

Along the way, the earlier version made crude mistakes, like giving the outdated name of the firm as “Blackwater” and not explaining the actual relationship between Academi and the spin-off, Greystone.

So now, the propagandists are trying to clean the story up — they’ve decided to go with “400″ — 150 or 300 probably sounded too meager (although the more they inflate the number, the more we’re going to ask why ordinary townspeople haven’t noticed these Americans). They also decided to give the story a more “credible” source than the Russian Foreign Ministry, which is likely to be biased on this subject — and have made the source be a German newspaper quoting German intelligence — although of course, no such claim has been made by the real German authorities:
...

As VOA correspondent Fatima Tlisova reported, given the demand for pictures, Russian TV has obliged by supplying one still that they touched up a little by removing a tell-tale “Wendy’s” restaurant and some other English-language signs. They claimed the photo showed American mercenaries in Ukraine. In fact, it’s a photo from New Orleans in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina:



So what’s the source for the story in Bild am Sonntag? Oh, it’s a story in the German version of RIA Novosti that takes us back to the same 7 April story we started with last month. It’s illustrated with a photo with the caption, “Kiev sends Blackwater mercenaries to suppress the protests in eastern Ukraine. But multiple other sources identify the fighters in battered old helmets as separatists in Slavyansk.

Back to the drawing board.
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-what-do-polls-measure-in-russia/

[dipsydoodle]

3. No smoke without fire

Over 100 US Elite Blackwater Mercenaries Deployed in Ukraine.

Over 100 private mercenaries belonging to the elite private US force Blackwater have set up base in Eastern Ukraine, in a bid to counter the Russian forces that are covertly supporting the mass movement, including the supply of weapons.

The information was leaked to the media by sources from German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which claims that the ad hoc Ukrainian government is colluding with the US government.

The Ukrainian government brought in the Blackwater forces secretively into the country in April, and the elite troop is in preparations to launch counter-actives against the covert Russian forces inside Kiev.

German daily Die Welt put the number of US mercenaries in Ukraine as 400. Blackwater has now been rechristened as Academi. The mercenary group was founded by former elite US soldiers fought in Iraq and Afghanistan but can also be hired by corporations and third countries.

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/over-100-us-elite-blackwater-mercenaries-deployed-ukraine-600071

I appreciate it might be better if one or more were actually caught and put on public display.

[Iterate]

4. Same story, same "source", different count.

The State Department has used private embassy security since ~2003-05, and private training is plausible but that's not evidence.

Repeating the same story is not evidence, especially since the original is false. Or maybe I just missed a change in standards. It has been interesting though to see how the story has morphed over the past month+ to make it smaller, more localized, and more difficult to disprove --all while adding no evidence.