Russian Military Intelligence Colonel Igor Salikov's sworn affidavit addressed to the ICC
Read the complete translation of the high-ranking Russian defector depicting Russian war crimes in Ukraine, addressed to the International Criminal Court at The Hague
Complete translation of Russian Officer Igor Salikov's affidavit addressed to the International Criminal Court:
To the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Karim Khan,
President of the ICC, Pieter Hofmann,
From [redacted]
NOTE: The name of the author, now known, is Russian GRU Military Intelligence Officer Igor Salikov
Statement (confession)
I, [redacted], voluntarily surrender myself to the hands of international justice, I wish to cleanse my soul and tell the international investigation and the Court, the facts of corruption, military aggression, and crimes known to me, to reveal the illegal schemes of Putin V.V. about the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and to provide detailed information about the facts known to me. I am ready to answer for what I have done, but I ask for international protection and political asylum for my family, because extrajudicial execution awaits me at my homeland for my civic position. Or blackmail through threats against my family in order to force me to refuse to testify to an independent court.
For more than a year, I have been providing information and materials to the founder of Gulagu.net Vladimir Osechkin for the development of the case at the International Criminal Court and the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. I have repeatedly testified by video conference, and I am reliably aware that my testimony has found its objective confirmation in the course of operational and investigative actions in Ukraine. I fully understand all the risks associated with the disclosure of my testimony and my arrival in The Hague/Amsterdam, but I consider it fundamentally important to publish this information and my testimony on the Gulagu.net channel and in the media, to expose the criminal schemes of the dictator Vladimir Putin, through whose fault hundreds of thousands of people have already been killed, and millions have been dehumanized.
I express my readiness to continue active participation in the disclosure of military crimes against humanity and international crimes with human rights defenders, journalists, and investigators/prosecutors of the International Criminal Court.
1. [redacted]
2. [redacted]
I met Dmitry Utkin briefly in the early 2000s in the North Caucasus region, when he served in the 2nd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 700th detachment, and where I was also on official business. In 2011-12, we worked together in our PMC (private military company), carrying out protective operations for clients. Later, we worked together at Wagner PMC, where Utkin, call sign “Wagner,” was the commander of the structure, under the financial management of Prigozhin E.V. Utkin personally gave orders for reprisals, executions, and cruel treatment of civilians in Ukraine and Syria, transmitting orders from Prigozhin, who carried out Putin's will. The murders of Ukrainian civilians was elevated to the rank of heroism as early as 2014 specifically by Utkin, at the direction of Prigozhin EV.
4. Redut Group (old): The Redut Group, which I was a part of, as a military consulting system, was created in the early 1990s. It was based on servicemen from the 15th Special Forces Brigade of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, and in particular the 467th Special Forces detachment of the GRU. Activities: Central Asia, South Caucasus, Indonesia, Middle East, Africa. Since 2018, the Redut Group, as part of the Russian Ministry of Defense, has been conducting combat operations in Syria, and since 2021, it has been carrying out actions (combat, terroristic, subversive) against Ukraine. I was a member of it.
5. In 2014, I took part in the first invasion of Ukraine under the guise of "protecting the referendum" in the Donbas region. I commanded the security group of the Prime Minister of the DPR Borodai A.Yu., who acted on behalf of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, personally receiving directives from Vladislav Surkov. We unwittingly became accomplices in an organized coup in part of Ukraine managed by the Presidential Administration of Russia. I witnessed the terrible falsification of data from Donetsk residents at all voting events of that period: including pressure and physical violence on the so-called chairman of the Central Election Commission, Roman Lyagin, if he did not give out the numbers the Kremlin needed. A large sum of money and a government award from the Russian Federation were announced for good work. I am reliably aware of this bribery, blackmail, and falsification of the vote by Alexander Borodai and the former deputy head of the Presidential Administration, aide to the President of the Russian Federation, Vladislav Surkov.
I am an indirect witness to the bloody denouement at the Donetsk airport on May 26, 2014, when the fate of the future war, which could have not been, was being decided. Borodai, Khodakovsky and their assistants killed a lot of people so that financing and weapons would quickly flow from Moscow in full. The Kremlin ordered more victims, and necessarily military actions under the guise of a "liberation movement of the people." Then I commanded a company of special forces from the FSB Special Purpose Center in the sector of the city of Snezhnoye,with tasks of supporting separatism, and preserving the corridor for the transportation of weapons to the DPR and LPR from the territory of the Russian Federation. At the end of 2014, beginning of 2015, I witnessed the purge of LPR field commanders by PMC Wagner forces. Through July 2015, I served as an officer (special rank of Colonel) as head of the 4th department at the Directorate of Special Operations under the General Prosecutor’s Office of DPR. Activities in the area of settlements of Marinka and Petrovsky district of Donetsk. Together with the FSB service of the Russian Federation, we came on the trail of the shelling of Donetsk. The trail led to units of the Republican Guard of the DPR, subordinated to Major General Kondratov I. (Call sign: Vanya Russkiy) and Zakharchenko. Battalion commander Ivanov Evgeny (Call sign: Kopyo) commanded the shelling. Objective: Disruption of "Minsk-2" and destabilization of the consciousness of the civilian population of Donetsk against the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I am an eyewitness to war crimes on the territory of Ukraine by forces of detachments and units subordinate to the headquarters of Zakharchenko and Khodakovsky, when streets and paths around the Trudovskaya mine/settlement and the nearby forest were mined, without drawing up minefield maps, and formulas-requirements of the Conventions, in a criminal violation of the Treaty on the Use of Anti-Personnel Mines. As a result, civilians died, moving to work and around the districts. Then, during 1.5 months of the spring of 2015, at least 5 people died, including children.
In 2017, while serving in Wagner PMC in Syria, I was also a witness to war crimes on the territory of Esh-Shair, Homs, Palmyra.
6. I, like other professionals in the military sphere, was supervised by: DKRO (Department of Counterintelligence Operations); Department "V" and "S" (Special Operations Directorate); 2nd counterintelligence service; USM (FSB Office of Special Activities). All structures of the "volunteer contingent" have acted and currently act under this same structure.
2021-2022 FSB Office of Special Activities prepared specialized Diversionary Reconnaissance Groups for actions on the territory of Ukraine not far from the borders of DPR and LPR. Their goal was to destabilize the situation in the Republics and blame Ukraine for it. These detachments were used to form the BGTs (Battalion Tactical Groups) that invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
I was head of the 2nd intelligence detachment, "Lesnik," commanded by Colonel Konstantin Vasilyevich Skubko. Before deploying to the Chernobyl zone, while in Bryansk region, three Ukrainian security service officers were attached to my unit: 2 SBU officers and one from Berkut, who had served under Yanukovich. The task was to capture the SBU (headquarters in Kyiv) and eliminate the employees according to the lists in possession of our secret agents.
During the execution of the tasks set by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine, I repeatedly saw violations of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention against the civilian population; cruelty toward prisoners of war and their subsequent execution; I saw the removal of children without parents by FSB officers to the territory of Belarus. At the end of March, in the Bucha district, I received an order from counterintelligence officers to shoot five people held prisoner by us, whom the FSB introduced as saboteurs, although they were all residents of nearby villages. I did not carry out the order and released the people, thereby subjecting myself to prosecution under a military warrant.
I will provide more detailed information in my testimony to ICC investigators, as well as in my several books, which I will publish later, for the public.
Date: 10 December 2023 signed:
[redacted]” END OF TRANSLATION
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