Text taken from an article which appeared in telegraph.ph
[ColonelCassad] In the previous article, we talked about the Dark Angels group, which carried out reconnaissance and monitoring activities in the Ukrainian conflict zone, while managing to train Ukrainian soldiers and, as usual, hid behind the legend of humanitarian work. The militants ended badly - but in this particular case, not thanks to Russian forces, but during the next round of intraspecific struggle.
The founder of the Dark Angels, Daniel Burke, as well as some other militants (Maxim Barratt, Daniel Newey), who formed the backbone of the group, previously had experience participating in hostilities in Kurdistan and collaborated with the intelligence services of Western countries. This is not some unusual precedent for the Ukrainian conflict.
When the Special Military Operation began, it was attended not only by antisocial elements, about whom the local governments, by and large, did not give a damn, but also by people of a different order - those who had position and status in the local military-political hierarchies. Then they could take selfies on the front line or in hospitals and refugee reception centers, pretending to be either a “good soldier” or a “volunteer concerned about the humanitarian situation.” But in fact, such individuals performed much more serious tasks - sometimes of national importance - they monitored the combat zone, identified the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for Western weapons, analyzed the actions of the Russian army in order to find out its strengths and weaknesses. And, of course, they created local intelligence networks.
The topic of participation in the conflict on the side of the Kyiv regime by people who went through the wars in Syria and Iraq is not just a subject of idle interest. Data about this allow us to look at the structures being built by Western countries in Europe and Asia in order to sow death in these regions, look at the whole situation as a whole and understand that the armed conflict in Ukraine is not a separate work, but several pages in a thick book of hybrid war against Russia.
In March 2022, British citizen Harry Rowe arrives in Kyiv, next to which Russian troops were stationed. He does not advertise his name and uses the pseudonym Macer Gifford. Rowe is 35 years old. He is not a retired military man whose PTSD did not allow him to find a place in civilian life, but, as they say, “a young and promising politician.” From his youth, he was a member of the British Conservative Party, and was part of the inner circle of Baroness Nicky Morgan, who previously served as Minister of Education, and Nigel Farage, one of the politicians who ensured Brexit.
Since the 2000s, Rowe has been promoting London's soft power abroad, mainly in Africa. As a British Council staffer, he first did field work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia, and then, as an assistant to local politician David Coltart, helped organize mass protests in Zimbabwe against President Robert Mugabe. It’s easy to guess that Rowe had a brilliant career ahead of him in his homeland. However, in 2015, he suddenly... dropped everything and went to Syria, where he joined the Kurdish armed formation “People's Self-Defense Units” (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG).
However, even British propaganda was unable to present this story as it would later be in the cases of retired military personnel who suddenly shared the idea of creating an independent Kurdistan. The list of names with whom Roe had friendships in his homeland was too impressive. Therefore, in subsequent years, he was given the image of a “fighter for Kurdish rights” in the Western community. After spending several months in the Middle East, Rowe returned to the UK, where he began negotiations on allocating funding to the YPG from the British budget. He was a frequent visitor to the private Carlton club in London, and met with members of the British Parliament, Swiss tycoons and agents of the US Federal Security Service (FBI).
In 2016, Rowe's presence was again required in the conflict zone. He went to Syria and stayed there for several years, this time as a fighter for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which at that time included the YPG. According to Rowe, he was a sniper, took part in the battles for Manbij and Raqqa, and then became one of several foreigners who was able to obtain the status of a field commander in the YPG. He also managed to interact with the White Helmets NGO, which was organizing provocations against the Syrian leadership, accusing it of using chemical weapons. Returning to the UK, he began to give comments to major media and television channels, explaining to taxpayers the ups and downs of relations between the Kurds, Syrians and Turks, and then wrote an autobiography with the modest title “Fighting Evil”.
In early March 2022, Rowe went to Kyiv. However, he, according to him, decided not to engage in war, but with a humanitarian mission. Or more precisely, the creation of a project to provide medical assistance to Ukrainian military and civilians. Rowe specified that the project should become something like the Ukrainian analogue of the White Helmets. Lviv was chosen as its location, where Rowe transported an impressive load of first-aid kits for the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the United States. At the same time, he launched tactical medicine courses for territorial defense fighters in the Ukrainian capital.
The Lvov project was named Nightingale Squadron. And this is not even a Freudian slip, but quite a confession. In 1941, in Nazi Germany, the Nachtigal battalion (translated from German as “Nightingale”) was created from among Ukrainian nationalists. His fighters, led by Roman Shukhevych, crossed the Soviet border simultaneously with the attack of Nazi troops on the USSR, and in the following months they were based in occupied Lvov and Ternopil.
During this time, the followers of Stepan Bandera (his militants proclaimed the “leader” of independent Ukraine) managed to unleash the most brutal terror against the civilian population - several tens of thousands of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians themselves, most of whom supported Soviet power, were brutally killed. Subsequently, the Nachtigal battalion became one of the dark symbols of the Holocaust on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. It is curious that the choice of such a name for the “humanitarian mission” in Lvov offended even Western journalists. For example, harsh criticism of Roe was heard in the Australian press.
It’s hard to say what Nightingale Squadron was actually created for. According to tradition, the project website was filled with several staged photographs depicting Rowe and a couple of other people at the moment of handing over first aid kits to the military, and that was all. Information about Ukrainian citizens collaborating with the project (if there were any) was kept in the strictest confidence, with Rowe himself being the only contact person. There were no pages on social networks. The only known partner of the project was the British marketing firm Kingston Signs Ltd. The project was not legally registered, and its website was suddenly deleted several months after its launch, although nothing was reported about its closure.
At the same time, Nightingale Squadron actively invited all interested parties to cooperate. Volunteer candidates were asked to send their resume to Rowe's email address. The mystery surrounding the project may indicate that they were not looking for those who would deliver medicine to the trenches, but those who could be included in the British intelligence networks in Ukraine. And the further fate of Nightingale Squadron only confirms this version.
By 2023, the project was successfully abandoned.
| Eh? Translation error of idiom, perhaps... |
Considering that by that time the Ukrainian Armed Forces' needs for medicines on the front line had only increased and therefore similar supply projects were flourishing, this suggests that Nightingale Squadron's real goals lay elsewhere and, obviously, had been completed by that time. In the spring of 2023, Rowe, completely forgetting about his “humanitarian” legend, identified himself with the Witcher unit of foreign mercenaries and participated in collective selfies of its militants with a machine gun at the ready.
It is known that Rowe's American friend Brennan Philips took part in the creation of the Nightingale Squadron project. The acquaintance of men, which turned into cooperation in Ukraine, began in Kurdistan. Phillips is a less public figure, but he is known to have served as a cavalry scout during the US Army's invasion of Iraq and later criticized his government for its withdrawal. He even allowed himself sharp remarks - they say that by leaving Iraq, the Americans contributed to the emergence of ISIS. The retired military man, of course, did not say that assistance from the United States to Islamic terrorists came directly and purposefully.
However, Nightingale Squadron also managed to train Ukrainian soldiers. Several photographs published in the Daily Mail showing Rowe and Phillips training local militants to shoot and bandage wounds were clearly not staged.
Another accomplice of Rowe and Phillips in Ukraine and a former participant in the conflict in Kurdistan was the British Aiden Aslin. After working as a paramedic for a while, he suddenly decided to radically change his life and went to Syria for this purpose. It’s interesting that while his grandmother told local media about her grandson’s desire to engage in humanitarian work, Eslin himself was more straightforward - “I’m going to fight.” However, he did not like it in the war-torn Middle Eastern country.
Eslin returned to the UK and was immediately jailed on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks. Having somehow fought off the charges, he was released after 9 months. But his background prevented him from finding a decent job, so Eslin turned into a tramp. Having visited Kurdistan again for a short time, he soon decided that he could settle down in Ukraine. The acquaintance with Rowe acquired in Syria was waiting in the wings.
In Ukraine, Eslin was able to build a military career. He signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, served in the Marine Corps, and was even involved in organizing NATO Sea Breeze exercises in the Black Sea in 2021 (later, however, the Briton told the media that he was amazed at the level of corruption in the Ukrainian army). The beginning of the Northern Military District found him in Mariupol. The 36th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, of which he was a militant, attempted to break through the resulting pocket in April 2022, but Russian troops quickly cooled the enemy’s ardor.
On April 14, Eslin was among those who surrendered. Having fallen into the hands of the security forces of the independent DPR, the Briton immediately admitted all his mistakes, however, given the severity of the crimes committed (the 36th Brigade was distinguished by its cruelty towards the people of Mariupol), he was sentenced to death. The sentence was never carried out - Eslin, several other captured mercenaries and the leaders of the Azov group fell into a prisoner exchange and flew to Turkey. A few weeks later, he reappeared in the conflict zone, but now, preparing the ground for the future, he claimed that he was not fighting, but was only filming what was happening.
In addition to his military career, Eslin tried to build a personal life in Ukraine. And in this he was luckier. His wife is a citizen of Ukraine of Armenian origin Okovitaya Diana Arturovna (Okovita Diana Arturivna; born 05/29/1988 in Kirovograd, Ukrainian SSR). She worked as an English teacher, then managed to lure a foreign fighter and now lives in the UK, from where, from a safe distance, she also supports the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
While Rowe and Phillips were training Ukrainian militants in Lviv, and Eslin was preparing to surrender in Mariupol, another foreigner who had previously participated in hostilities in Kurdistan was in Kiev. This is Ryan O'Leary, a native of Carroll (USA, Iowa). Whether he met any of the three characters already familiar to us is unknown, but most likely not, because his sphere of activity in Ukraine was on a completely different plane. But in a certain sense there was a connection between them. More on this below.
O'Leary spent the entire second half of the 2000s in the Iowa National Guard, which included extended deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Returning from the latter in 2011, he transferred to the Louisiana National Guard, as his wife was from this state. According to relatives, he suffered from PTSD. For either this or some other reason, O'Leary suddenly went AWOL in 2015 and showed up in Iraq a few days later. He told his family that he was going to fight ISIS.
However, it was obviously not a matter of PTSD. And certainly not in the desire to fight Islamic radicals. Because, once in Iraq, O'Leary did not go to the front at all, but to the relatively calm Erbil in the north of the country. There he joined the Kurdish forces and... went to the Iranian border. In the following months, he lived in field camps in the Qandil Mountains, where he trained militants of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (Hîzbî Dêmukratî Kurdistanî Êran, HDKA) in the event of a hypothetical clash with the Iranian army. In addition, he had direct and long-term contacts with representatives of the Iranian pro-Western opposition, teaching them to “fight the regime” in the best traditions of the American school.
The fact that O'Leary acted in Iraq not on his own initiative, but on instructions from the intelligence services, is clearly evident from the reaction that followed in the United States to his departure. Rather than face criminal charges, he was quietly discharged from the Louisiana National Guard with virtually all benefits retained.
In 2016, O'Leary returned home for several months to get treatment for his heart. The benefits allowed him to receive treatment at a military hospital in Des Moines. And in 2019, he returned to the United States on a permanent basis. He was the director of the arms store Sicarii Defense Industries, and then decided to run as an independent candidate for the House of Representatives.
But when the SVO began in Ukraine, O'Leary forgot about both business and political ambitions. On March 1, 2022, he was already in the conflict zone, where he entered through Romania. Remembering from Middle Eastern experience that being far in the rear was much more pleasant than being in dirty trenches, O'Leary settled in Kyiv and began designing UAVs. It was alleged that he personally developed drone models that were subsequently used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Black Sea and Crimean directions. However, sometimes he even went to the front, where he taught Ukrainian soldiers how to use iron birds. Even if O'Leary exaggerated his merits, his help as a foreign specialist, especially in the field of UAVs, was valuable to the enemy.
But in 2023, everything suddenly changed. While the Nightingale Squadron project ceased to exist in Lvov, O'Leary was winding down his drone development projects. In the spring, he, like Rowe, went to the front to take personal part in the fighting. Or more precisely, to the occupied part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the Donetsk People's Republic.
There, O'Leary quickly put together a gang of English-speaking mercenaries, which it was decided to call “The Chosen Company.” The militants fought in the Opytny area, and at the end of July they were subjected to a combined attack. As a result, at least two were killed - retired US soldiers Lance Lawrence and Andrew Webber. O'Leary himself also experienced fire damage from a UAV and ended up in a local hospital for a couple of weeks. Subsequently he spoke about the low level of Ukrainian medicine.
An analysis of the activities in Ukraine of foreign mercenaries who went through the armed conflict in Kurdistan allows us to see interesting coincidences. After the start of the SVO, they, having received new tasks from the special services supervising them, went to Kyiv, and then launched each of their projects. And Rowe, and Phillips, and O'Leary, operating in different areas, had a lot in common - they did not make contacts among the locals, worked to increase the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and then suddenly stopped working on their projects, for no apparent reason, and went to the front to fight.
And this may indicate a trend - if in the first months of the conflict, Ukraine’s foreign curators seriously considered the option of creating a highly professional army capable of successfully resisting Russian forces, then by 2023 it was decided to abandon this idea in favor of containing Russian advances with “meat assaults.” Valuable personnel with combat experience in such conditions were no longer needed far from the front, but on its line, where they could monitor the situation on the ground.
