Posted on 10/07/2019 4:29:09 AM PDT by BeadCounter
MOSCOW - As many as 35 Russian mercenaries are reported to have been killed in Libya while they were fighting for Khalifa Haftar, the military general most associated with the rule of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi, who launched an offensive earlier this year on the Libyan capital of Tripoli, home to the country’s internationally-recognized government, according to a Russian media.
The mercenaries are thought to work for the Wagner Group, a military contractor run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman nicknamed Putin’s Chef because he holds lucrative Kremlin catering contracts.
Asked by VOA about the reports of the fatalities in an airstrike on the outskirts of Tripoli, where Haftar’s forces have been bogged down for months, Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said she had “no detailed information” and suggested directing questions to Russia’s defense ministry.
(Excerpt) Read more at voanews.com ...
Or there may be money in it...
What is it with these people?
“Putin’s Brain”
“Putin’s Executioner”
“Putin’s Chef”
You could substitute the name of any tyrant in there, I suppose.
Oil money.
...while they were fighting for Khalifa Haftar, the military general most associated with the rule of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi... The mercenaries are thought to [have] work[ed] for the Wagner Group, a military contractor run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman nicknamed Putin’s Chef because he holds lucrative Kremlin catering contracts.
Putin gets his cut, the 35 mercs just get cut.
A month ago, the upstart Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj threatened the EU with 800,000 more migrants, including “criminals and terrorists,” “unless the assault on Tripoli by warlord Khalifa Haftar ends soon. Sarraj issued this warning – which could be taken as a threat to prod Europe into taking action against Haftar.” ------ Merkel demands that EU states resume illegal Muslim migrant naval pickup mission, JIHAD WATCH ^ | AUG 22, 2019 5:00 PM | CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS Posted on 8/23/2019, 1:23:44 AM by robowombat
Are they really mercs?
“Are they really mercs?”
Most likely. Khaddafi had hired literally thousands of mercenaries for protection. His ace in the hole was his southern mercenary army. Additional freelance mercs were scattered around Libya.
After Khaddafi ordered his regular army to shoot libyans, about 75% of the army deserted and headed back to their provinces to protect their families. All the armories were raided and emptied. The army deserters linked up with provincial militias and set up a plan to eliminate Khaddafi’s mercenaries, after the mercs shot up a college campus. The shooting enraged the Libyans.
The mercs were hunted down like rabid dogs and were mostly shot. Some were tortured and hanged and shoveled into open pit mass graves. We were doing contract work for an Israeli company during the Libyan civil war and had access to videos. The anti-merc operation was gruesome. Thousands of mercenaries were swallowed up by the Libyan sand and were never seen again.
IMO, the Libyans wanted to send a message to middle eastern and European powers to keep their proxy mercs out of Libya’s business.
Check Syria Call, the website, looks like FSA to me but they report a lot of Mercenaries killed. They are right sometimes.
WoW! If you can post videos somehow it would be great!
The Russkies take another special ops beatdown.
First Syria, now Libya.
No worries, they are considered expendable by Putin, much as the freedom of the Russian people.
Khalifa Haftar's yearlong Tripoli offensive against the Ankara-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) began to collapse. Believed to have been supplied to the Libyan strongman as early as last year by his backers [Iran's stooges] in the Gulf, the Russian system was meant to be used as a trump card against Turkey's combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) air interdiction operations... Analysis of open source data has estimated that up to 9 Pantsir units were lost in quick succession to UAV strikes during May, with footage of the strikes going viral on social media. To add insult to injury, a tenth Pantsir system was dramatically captured by GNA forces, and to great fanfare paraded through Tripoli as a war trophy. It is speculated that the captured Pantsir's final fate is to be picked apart for intelligence purposes.Libya: A Catastrophe for Russia's Pantsir S1 Air Defense System
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