>>831230

http:// www.newsweek.com/total-f-russian-mercenaries-syria-lament-us-strike-killed-dozens-818073

Recordings have emerged in which Russian mercenaries subjected to a joint U.S. strike that killed dozens of their comrades describe the incident as “a total fuckup.”

Polygraph.info, a Voice of America project, published three recordings, which it received from a source close to the Kremlin. The source said that the recorded phone calls were made by personnel from CHVK Wagner, a Russian private military company.

The incident in question occurred on the night of February 7 and early morning of February 8, when Syrian government forces—backed by Russian mercenaries employed by CHVK Wagner—attempted to capture an oil refinery near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. After Russian personnel came into contact with American troops stationed there, the U.S. forces responded with artillery and airstrikes.

>>831241

https:// www.thedailybeast.com/did-the-us-really-kill-200-russians-in-syriaor-just-a-few

Last week, the headquarters of a U.S. proxy in Syria—the Syrian Democratic Forces—and their American advisers came under attack by a large Syrian regime force 8 kilometers east of the agreed-upon Euphrates River de-confliction line near Deir al-Zour.

In “self-defense,” the U.S. launched a large-scale artillery and air assault to repel the attackers. Using F-15s, F-22s, AC-130 gunships, Apache helicopters, MQ-9 unmanned drones, and artillery, U.S. forces killed an estimated 100 attackers, according to some Russian media reports, and destroyed numerous tanks and artillery pieces. Among the reported fatalities, according to a Pentagon official, were Syrian Arab Army soldiers enlisted in the “ISIS Hunters” unit, as well as Russian mercenaries working for Wagner, a private military company under the command-and-control of the Russian Ministry of Defense that has been tasked with re-taking oilfields from ISIS.

Initially, Moscow denied any connection. “The reasons for the incident were reconnaissance and search activities by Syrian militia not coordinating with the command of the Russian operations group,” Interfax cited the Russian defense ministry as saying.

But much like the Kremlin’s denial of Russian army soldiers or special operators being deployed in Ukraine, this narrative is rapidly eroding against a tide of social media and even pro-Kremlin press claims naming the names of the slain mercenaries and giving details of their funerals in St. Petersburg.

If confirmed, this would be the first time that U.S. forces directly engaged and killed Russian combatants in Syria, albeit not the first time that CIA-armed forces have done so, as The Daily Beast has previously reported.

Additionally, the scuttlebutt among Russian adventurers has swirled with information of those killed and wounded in battle. The problem is that many of the claims being made offer wildly different casualty figures.

Curiously, the story of the Wagner losses has not appeared at all on Fontanka, the independent St. Petersburg website that first broke the story of the private military company’s deployment to Syria in 2013. (After Fontanka journalist Denis Korotokov published a series of articles on Wagner in 2017, he was accused on anonymous websites of “betraying the motherland,” having ties with ISIS, and helping Ukrainian intelligence. Then he began to get violent threats.)