Having occupied Crimea, Russia turned it into a military base, installing modern radars there to control the airspace.
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This material contains images and videos, as well as descriptions of killings and mutilations, which may shock some readers.
Image analysis suggests that a prominent Russian neo-Nazi linked to the Wagner group may be involved in a photo taken in Syria of a man holding a severed head.
Oleksiy Milchakov headed the ultra-right group “Rusych”, which is often called Wagner’s “contingent”. It was previously reported that “Rusych” was involved in war crimes in Syria and Ukraine, including torture and mutilation. According to the Russian newspaper “Kommersant”, Milchakov managed “Rusych” together with Yan Petrovskyi, both of whom are under sanctions of the US, EU and other countries.
On February 10, 2020, a photo of a man in military uniform holding a severed head in his hand was published in the Telegram channel of a well-known Russian military blogger. Another severed head could be seen behind him, and in the background a hilly area with smoke on the horizon. Almost four years after the first publication, on January 18, the official “Rusich” Telegram channel republished the image, but soon deleted it.
The face of the man holding the head has been retouched in the photo, which is believed to have been taken in 2017. Although an unretouched version has been mentioned on social media, it has not yet been found. However, even a retouched version of the image using open source research techniques can provide a glimpse of the identity of the man in uniform in the hilly area near Palmyra.
After the first publication, other photos of “Rusych” fighters in Syria appeared. Analysis of camouflage patterns shows that the form of the man in the photo matches the one worn by Milchakov in social networks. He is probably the one holding the severed head. This is not the first case of such actions by “Wagner” in Syria.
In the Rusych Telegram channel, they said that this was not a war crime, because they were not military, and they were having fun. They did not confirm that it was Milchakov, instead suggesting that it was a far-right Belarusian.
This photo was published after an article identified Russian mercenaries from Wagner as the ones who tortured a Syrian man in 2017. The Russian authorities never charged them.
Meanwhile, Rusych and Wagner published other retouched images taken in the same area of Syria. Beheadings and other acts of cruelty are widely used in Wagner propaganda. Such images became part of mercenary culture, especially during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Telegram channel that first published the photo of a man with a severed head belonged to Maxim Fomin, a Russian military blogger known as Vladlen Tatarsky. Fomin was a militant in pro-Russian separatists in the Luhansk region of Ukraine and became a central figure in the Russian mercenary community. He died in April 2023 during an event in St. Petersburg, where Russian propagandists were present.
This photo was geolocated in the area of Palmyra in the Syrian province of Homs on the coordinates ( 34.8766944, 37.9440556 ).
This place is located only five and a half kilometers to the northeast of the place where the aforementioned torture and beheading of a Syrian by “Wagner” mercenaries took place in early 2017.
This was probably a typographical error, and the Syrian Homs was meant, since the letters O and L are next to each other on the keyboard. Although the year information may be inaccurate, the location is correct: the photo was taken in Homs province. This suggests that the user either had geolocation skills or knew more about the context of the image.
User landskneht14war claimed to know the author of the photo, first suggesting that it was not “Sadik” (Russian slang for soldiers of the pro-Assad Syrian Arab Army), then clarifying in correspondence with another user.
“I saw the original several years ago and know the author of the photo. This is not Sadik,” wrote landskneht14war.
The identity of the decapitated person has not been established. The landskneht14war part of the nickname may be a reference to the Landsknechts, the German-speaking mercenaries who operated in the Holy Roman Empire, and the number 14 is a possible reference to the “14 words” slogan used by white supremacists. These clues may indicate the extreme right-wing beliefs of the user, which coincide with the views of the neo-Nazi members of “Rusych”.
Further investigation of social media connections suggests that landskneht14war may have more information about this image.
When the author investigated Milchakov’s Instagram account in 2020, he discovered that the user landskneht14war was among Milchakov’s followers. At the time of publication, both accounts have been deleted.
This Instagram account can be identified as belonging to Milchakov due to the name “Yurovych Oleksiy”, which corresponds to his real name and middle name. After entering the data of this profile into one of the Telegram bots used to collect merged personal data, a confirmation was received.
The phone number linked to this Instagram account was also linked to other social media profiles belonging to Oleksiy Milchakov. His full name, date of birth and the names under which he was stored in contacts, such as “Olexii Yuriyovych”, “Milchakov”, “Serb” and “Fritzula”, were obtained, confirming his identity.
James Gow, professor of international peace and security and director of the War Crimes Research Group at King’s College London, said the photo may depict violations of several international war crimes laws. In particular, this concerns the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Canon of customary international law of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which prohibit mutilation of dead bodies.
Since the man’s face in the photo was retouched, a different approach had to be used to identify him. The author of the study, working at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab), decided to investigate camouflage on the uniform.
Despite the repeating camouflage pattern, the specific details can vary depending on the location on the garment. This is especially important during identification, because even on the same form, the location of the colored spots may differ. This principle is well illustrated by the example of American soldiers.
We can apply this principle to a Syrian photograph of a man holding a severed head. To do this, you need to compare the uniform with the one in the photos taken from Milchakov’s account on the Russian social network Vkontakte, which contain a lot of information about his military service.
This account with the username “Olexii Serb” contains photos of “Rusich” flags and documents of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” showing Milchakov’s surname, first name and patronymic (archive copies of the images can be viewed here).
The interactive image below shows a comparison of individual elements of Milchakov’s clothing. By clicking on the elements of the shape of a person holding a severed head in his hands, you can study the corresponding spheres of the same shape in Milchakov’s photographs.
The man in the picture, holding the severed head, is wearing a uniform with the popular cartoon pattern of camouflage. We found four matches in the placement of the camouflage pattern on three different pieces of clothing (panama, jacket and pants).
For example, the left sleeve of the uniform of the man holding the severed head shows the chevron of the 234th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment of the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division of Russia. The same chevron is often found in Milchakov’s photographs.
Two black spots are visible on the edge of the pocket near the chevron, and a thin brown line on the flap. These details indicate that the form depicted in the photo may be the same as in other photographs of Milchakov. A chevron with the “Rusich” logo is partially visible on the right hand.
This factor, together with the fact that the photo appeared in Rusych’s posts on social networks, indicates the connection of the man holding the severed head with the Rusych group. The probability of a random coincidence of several identical items of camouflage clothing is very low, which supports the version that this is Milchakov’s uniform, and therefore, probably himself.
The camouflage pattern analysis methodology used for the comparison has been validated by independent experts as “viable” and trustworthy. Guy Kremer, CEO of HyperStealth BioTechnology, noted that most molds are unique due to the random placement of patterns during production. He also pointed to the low probability that the uniform could have been made with an identical pattern on different samples of clothing.
This form identification also provides additional information about other redacted images posted on Rusych’s accounts, which are geolocated to confirm the group’s presence near the site of the severed head photo.
In recent years, “Rusych” has published many materials about these operations; the differences in equipment visible in these materials suggest that the group conducted operations in Syria at least twice at different times.
In 2020, the Norwegian media NRK reported on the role of Rusych leader Yan Petrovsky and other far-right Russians with ties to Norway, where Petrovsky used to live. Last December, Petrovskyi was detained in Finland on suspicion of committing war crimes in eastern Ukraine, in connection with which Kyiv requested his extradition.
NRK also used identical details of the uniform and equipment to identify Jan Petrovski in photos from Syria, where he admitted his group was involved in combat. Petrovsky confirmed that the “Rusych” unit had a mission in Syria, but when asked about the details, he only answered: “war.” Photos were recently published on Rusych’s Telegram channel, where a man in the same uniform as the one in the picture with his severed head is posing next to the bodies of ISIS fighters.
In September 2022, Rusych published a similar collage. This time, the same uniform as the man holding the severed head is worn on the man on the left.
Both photos were easily geolocated – they were taken in Syria in the hills northwest of the city of Palmyra. The photo on the left was taken at the point (34.7413187777, 37.9193291545), and the photo on the right was taken at the point (34.6563923319, 38.1964929957), at a distance of 27 kilometers from each other, on opposite sides of the same ridge of hills.
Two more photos published by “Rusych” in VK in June 2022 showed armed men against the background of the same desert landscape near Palmyra.
A close examination of several of these photos also reveals a close resemblance to the location of the camouflage pattern on the uniform worn by Milchakov in the photos from his VK account:
Moreover, three of these four images (photos one, three and five in the picture below) were geolocated close to each other in the same area of Syria. Another picture of the landscape from Rusych’s Instagram account (sixth photo) was taken in the same area as the two photos that Fontanka and NRK reported on in their materials about Rusych (second and fourth photos):
Moreover, three of these four images (photos one, three and five in the figure below) were geolocated close to each other in the same area of Syria. Another landscape shot from Rusych’s Instagram account (sixth photo) was taken in the same area as the two photos that Fontanka and NRK reported in their stories about Rusych (second and fourth photos):
These coincidences of the pattern of camouflage, as well as other equipment, suggest that the person wearing the same uniform as the person holding the severed head was active in the ranks of Russian mercenaries north of Palmyra, that is, in the area where Milchakov was located.
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