The Russian aggression in Ukraine is well into the sixth year. At the beginning of its invasion of Crimea in February-March 2014, official Russia denied its use of military force against Ukraine in the peninsula, designating thousands of the Russian masked heavily armed soldiers in Russian green uniform without insignia who operated unmarked Russian military vehicles and equipment “self-defense units” created spontaneously by Crimean people. Later he admitted that they were Russian soldiers. However, since Russia unleashed a war in two Ukrainian easternmost oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk in April 2014, it keeps on denying its full control of the occupied region and even the very fact of the Russian direct military involvement in the war.
Meanwhile, extensive evidence suggests otherwise: multiple types of exclusively Russian military equipment was documented in the Donbas, Russian active-duty soldiers were captured at the early stages of the war, and numerous mercenaries were identified as active-duty Russian soldiers.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, volunteer OSINT sleuths of the InformNapalm intelligence community have been gathering information on the involvement of the Russian active-duty soldiers, operatives, and military equipment in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, as well as against Georgia and Syria. InformNapalm has performed more than 2,000 investigations of individual cases, mostly based on the open-source intelligent data (OSINT) that were collected from publicly available sources.
Here are the latest cases.
Russian military equipment
The war in the Donbas has been ongoing for six years now. The Russian occupation forces have been equipped not only with Soviet-designed military equipment operated by most post-Soviet countries, including Ukraine and Russia. There is extensive evidence indicating that armed formations fighting against Ukraine in the Donbas also use military hardware designed in Russia and used exclusively by the Russian armed forces and special units.
Lately, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) spotted three pieces of Russian-made electronic warfare systems of different types, and the Ukrainian military shot down another piece of the Russian reconnaissance drone Zastava.
Electronic warfare systems
The SMM operating in the Donbas mentioned in their report of 12 March 2020 that on 10 March the Mission spotted three pieces of various Russian electronic warfare systems, one RB-341V Leer-3, one R-934B Sinitsa, and one RB-636 Svet-KU) in a compound in the southern outskirts of Luhansk city.
InformNapalm has pinpointed the exact location of the military base in occupied Luhansk.
Read also: Propagandists invent cover-up for Russian army electronic warfare equipment in eastern Ukraine
In total, at least 12 types of Russian EW stations were spotted in the Donbas:
Earlier in November and December 2019, The OSCE published photos of the R-934B and RB-636 spotted in the occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
Read also: Another piece of Russian electronic warfare equipment spotted in occupied Donbas
UAV Zastava
The reconnaissance and fire adjustment UAV Zastava was previously spotted in the Donbas. For example, the Ukrainian border guards shot down the Zastava in 2015 in Luhansk Oblast and published a relevant video.
Now, in April 2020 the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) that is in charge of the Ukrainian forces operating in the Donbas reported on their Facebook page that the Ukrainian military had shot down another Zastava in the area of Svitlodarsk bulge, Donetsk Oblast and shared photos of the downed aerial vehicle.
The Russian troops are operating at least eight types of the Russian-designed military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV):
Soldiers and their units
InformNapalm volunteers continue identifying more of the Russian military who participated in the invasion of Crimea and in hostilities in the Donbas.
Read also: Russian participation in the war in Donbas: evidence from 2017
Paratroopers of the 104th Air Assault Regiment from Pskov
InformNapalm tracked down social media profiles of 19 Pskov paratroopers who had served in the 76th Airborne Division, mostly in its 104th Air Assault Regiment; 18 of them partook in the invasion of Georgia back in 2008. Eight of them are still serving in the Russian Armed Forces, and six fought in Ukraine in locally formed Russian-controlled armed formations. However, no direct evidence was found that they remained active-duty soldiers or career officers of the Pskov-based military unit or arrived as mercenaries at the time of their participation in the Russian war against Ukraine in the Donbas.
Here are several photographs of them in the Donbas warzone:
Read also: What we know about Russia’s active-duty soldiers captured in eastern Ukraine from 2014
41st Brigade of Missile Boats
Russia’s 41st Brigade of Missile Boats consists of two squadrons: 166th Novorossiysk Guided Missile Corvette Squadron (166th GMCS) and 295th Sulino Missile Boat Squadron (295th MBS). And the ships of both detachments are featured in InformNapalm’s OSINT investigations as the participants in the aggression against Ukraine. Now the sleuths have discovered more facts, having identified several servicemen of the brigade who were awarded the Crimea occupation medal.
Read also: Russian aggression, documented: How official documents reveal Russia’s involvement in Ukraine
GMC Shtil
InformNapalm identified several sailors from the Russian Navy’s guided-missile corvette (GMC) Shtil who were awarded for the occupation of Crimea.
In 2014, their ship was among the vessels that blocked Ukrainian ships in the Donuzlav Bay of Crimea. And back in 2008, GMC Shtil was engaged in the Russian aggression against Georgia and later remained on duty off the coast of the Georgian region of Abkhazia, occupied by the Russians.
Kalmykia native Vladimir Derbetov, the commander of the GMC Shtil in 2014, received an early promotion to the captain of the 3rd rank and was awarded a Medal of Ushakov for his participation in the Crimean campaign, according to the Russian newspaper Lyudinovskiy Rabochiy.
Dmitry Mikheyev from Russia’s Tatarstan, who served as a sailor on Shtil, shared a photo of the medal for the occupation of Crimea officially called “For the Return of Crimea” and a photo of the award certificate.
Read also: Hacked military docs reveal how the Russian 18th motorized brigade invaded Crimea
Another Shtil sailor, Dmitry Doras from Stavropol, was pictured wearing the medal for the occupation of Crimea:
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Read also:
- The hidden invasion: Russia’s military convoys to Ukraine since 2014
- What we know about Russia’s active duty soldiers captured in eastern Ukraine from 2014
- Russian aggression, documented: How official documents reveal Russia’s involvement in Ukraine
- Another piece of Russian electronic warfare equipment spotted in occupied Donbas
- Russian aggression, documented: How official documents reveal Russia’s involvement in Ukraine
- Propagandists invent cover-up for Russian army electronic warfare equipment in eastern Ukraine
- PMC Wagner is a unit of Russian military intelligence, mercs’ IDs show – SBU chief
- The hidden invasion: Russia’s military convoys to Ukraine since 2014
- Hacked military docs reveal how the Russian 18th motorized brigade invaded Crimea
- Ukrainian OSINT sleuths release largest existing database of evidence of Russian aggression in Ukraine (2018)
- Russian participation in the war in Donbas: evidence from 2017
- What we know about Russian troops in eastern Ukraine
- Donbas “separatists” got 33 types of military systems from Russia – report (2016)
- The 75 Russian military units at war in Ukraine (2016)
- MAP: Social networks overflow with images of Russian military equipment moving towards Ukraine (2014)
