Russia opens criminal case against US mercenary
Russia has launched an investigation against an American citizen, Derrick Bales, in connection with multiple crimes, including murder, terrorism, and mercenary activities, that he allegedly committed on Russian soil while fighting for Kiev as a mercenary, the nation’s Investigative Committee announced on Saturday.
According to investigators, Bales “has been personally taking part in the armed conflict as a mercenary on the territory of the Russian Federation, acting as part of the Forward Observations Group private military company fighting on the side of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
Bales is the founder of the Forward Observations Group, which refers to itself as a military-style brand that sells tactical gear and various accessories. The company has social media pages on Instagram and YouTube, while the group’s members have travelled to Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. They have also published photos from Donbass and, most recently, Russia’s Kursk Region. Moscow has repeatedly referred to it as a private military company engaged in the Ukraine conflict.
According to the Investigative Committee's statement, the group’s members, including Bales, illegally crossed into Kursk together with the Ukrainian military in late August. Kiev launched an incursion into the Russian border region earlier that month.
Ukrainian forces made some initial progress in the early days of August but were quickly contained. Moscow’s troops have subsequently been gradually pushing the Ukrainians back.
Over the nearly two months since the start of the incursion, the Russian military has managed to recapture more than a dozen settlements close to the border. The total number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the operation has surpassed 20,000, according to Russian Defense Ministry estimates.
According to the committee, Bales and his fellow mercenaries killed civilians to intimidate the locals, and also sought to inflict “serious property damage and destabilize the work of the local authorities” in Kursk. Bales acted “as part of an organized group … motivated by political and ideological hatred,” the investigators said.
Russian law enforcement is currently seeking to determine the whereabouts of Bales and his accomplices and “establish all the facts of his crimes.”
The Forward Observations Group published several photos from Kursk on its Instagram account. One of them, dated from mid-August, showed three men dressed in camouflage and wearing military gear with assault rifles in their hands. The men can be seen standing in front of a Humvee with a caption to the photo saying: “The boys in Kursk.”
The photo prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to summon the US charge d’affaires in Moscow to protest what it called the involvement of an American private military company in Kiev’s incursion into the Russian border region. These actions “clearly demonstrate the United States’ role as a direct participant in the conflict and its complicity in Vladimir Zelensky’s malicious plans,” the ministry said at the time.
The group has since published another photo it said was from Kursk that shows another man in military gear holding an assault rifle and standing near a mortar against the background of a damaged building. The man’s face was painted over in the photo.
American officials have not reacted to the Russian Investigative Committee’s statement so far.
