Thread by @bellingcat

An image analysis by Bellingcat shows an infamous Russian neo-Nazi with ties to the controversial paramilitary Wagner Group may be depicted in a photograph showing a man holding a severed head in Syria...bellingcat.com/news/2024/01/2…

Alexey Milchakov oversaw the far-right Rusich Group, which has previously been implicated in war crimes in Syria and Ukraine, including torture and mutilation.

The 'co-leader' of the group Yan Petrovsky is currently in Finnish custody pending an extradition request by Ukraine for alleged war crimes committed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014 and 2015.

On February 10, 2020, a Telegram channel connected to the Wagner mercenary group posted an image of a man in uniform holding a severed head. Behind him was another severed head and the backdrop of hilly, uncultivated terrain, smoke rising from the horizon.

Mutilating the dead is considered a war crime under customary international humanitarian law. ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/…

James Gow, Professor of International Peace and Security and Codirector of the War Crimes Research Group at @KingsCollegeLon, told us the image potentially shows violations of multiple war crimes statutes.

The image was first posted on the Telegram channel of Maxim Fomin, a Russian military blogger also known as Vladlen Tatarsky. Fomin was assassinated in April 2023. In the 2020 post, Fomin wrote the Russian-language caption “a typical Syrian volunteer speaks to his Yorick”.

Bellingcat used camouflage patterns on his uniform to conclude that the man in the image was not a Syrian volunteer but appears to be Alexey Milchakov.

As Bellingcat has previously reported, Wagner’s social media channels have a track record of deliberately posting misleading information about their activities. bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…

Rusich censors faces they publish on their social media, but commonalities in gear and camouflage allow researchers to track individuals. Using the patterns of the man’s uniform, as well as his other gear, he was identifiable in multiple images of Russian mercenaries.

Camouflage patterns are repetitive, but the patterns will vary in terms of where they are placed on the uniform. When applying this to the image of a man holding a severed head in Syria, we can see that Alexey Milchakov wears the exact same uniform as in the picture.

A combination of three separate pieces of camouflaged clothing with the same pattern carries a far lower chance of duplication than two. Across three different parts of clothing, points of the uniforms were matched to confirm that they were identical pieces of clothing.

This method was previously used on photographs from Syria by the Norwegian media outlet NRK in 2020 to identify Petrovsky, the Rusich co-leader who is currently detained in Finland. nrk.no/urix/xl/assads…

Milchakov has openly described himself as “a Nazi.”. While active in the Donbas, Milchakov documented himself and his unit mutilating the body of a Ukrainian soldier. He has been accused of horrific war crimes and animal abuse in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

The image was taken north of Palmyra in the Homs province of Syria, just five and a half kilometres northeast of where the documented torture and beheading of a Syrian man at the hands of Wagner mercenaries took place in early 2017.

We were able to geolocate multiple other images of the same group in the Palmyra area from photos posted by Rusich social media accounts

In a statement posted to their Telegram channel after Bellingcat reached out for comment, Rusich wrote, “the acts depicted do not constitute a war crime because a) we're not military and b) we were happy to do it."

Rusich did not directly address whether Milchakov was the man in the image or involved in this incident.

You can read into the details of our process of geolocating and identifying the man in the photo in the investigation here: bellingcat.com/news/2024/01/2…

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