LOOK ONLYat the top of the photograph of four men posing in military garb and the mood seems light. One man smiles. Another puffs on a cigarette while staring straight into the lens. But glance down at their feet and you see a severed head on the concrete floor. Before beheading their victim, the men had made a video of themselves laughing as they smashed his hands and feet with a sledgehammer. The incident took place in Syria in 2017. The victim is reported to have deserted the Syrian army, and his killers were probably Russian. At least one has been identified as an operative fromWagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit with connections to Russian military intelligence that, not for the first time, is reportedly operating in Ukraine.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Vladimir’s army”
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