Russian Mercenary Arrested at US Border
A member of Putin's private army, the Wagner Group, was arrested crossing the Rio Grande last week with $4,000, two passports and a drone.
Many migrants try to cross America’s southern border seeking economic opportunity. Timur Praliev, an honored combat veteran in the Wagner Group, Putin’s private army, apparently had other plans. Praliev was apprehended last week crossing the US border near Roma, Texas with a drone. Unless he is planning on pursuing a passion for aerial photography, he was likely on his way to do more to destroy the American dream than pursue it.
Why was he carrying a drone? Russian soldiers like Praliev use drones for two things - spying and killing.
His comrades in the liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson have been using drones to hunt humans in what the locals call a “human safari.”
Russians occupied Kherson for the first eight months of their full-scale invasion. The Dnipro river runs through the city. Russian forces still occupy the left bank. Russian drone operators on the left bank fly drones into free Kherson and stalk civilians who are going to work or out shopping. And kill them.
Most of the time anyway. Oleh, a Ukrainian pastor with whom we work, was driving home from a church service with two of his children when a Russian drone dropped a grenade on his car. Miraculously, nobody in the car sustained life threatening injuries and the car continued to function.
Pastor Oleh raced home. The drone followed him and hovered over his house. The drone operator was waiting for Pastor Oleh to call an ambulance so as to kill the first responders. Not wanting to draw others into the line of fire, the family tended to their own wounds. After about 15 minutes of waiting, the drone dropped its second bomb on Oleg’s house.
See below for actual footage of the drone strike at Oleg’s house
The videos are easy to find. Russian soldiers are proud of killing civilians, posting videos of their work on social media. Our friends in Kherson tell us that the Russians hunt and kill 2-3 Ukrainian civilians per day.
This can happen in the United States.
Kamikaze drones are cheap to make, easy to operate, difficult to detect and deadly. Anybody with access to YouTube and the ability to operate a soldering iron can buy a kamikaze drone kit from Alibaba for $279.
Ukrainian volunteers are using 3D printers in their kitchens to print munition casings for Ukrainian military drones. This can easily be done by Russians, Iranians or Chinese migrants in a kitchen in Dallas or Jacksonville. Just add explosive materials and you have a weapon that can kill a dozen people from miles away.
Just weeks before attempting to cross the US border, Praliev was honored as a combat veteran in a ceremony in his native Bashkortostan, a Russian republic in Central Asia, according to social media posts.
Why Praliev felt the need to take a drone with him rather than purchase one in the United States is hard to say. A surveillance drone has an expensive camera, whereas an attack drone has a cheap camera, so the purpose of his mission will be clear to anyone who knows about drones.
This is not about Praliev. He is just a warning sign. Our adversaries are learning from each other to more effectively attack us.
China, Iran, Russia and North Korea are all working together. North Korea has sent some 11,000 troops to fight alongside Russians in Ukraine, in part because Kim Jong Un wants to learn Russian drone tactics and technology. He has already sent drones into the airspace above the South Korean presidential palace.
Russia has sent almost 10,000 Iranian-made Shahed drones into Ukraine, primarily to kill Ukrainian civilians. The Shaheds are larger, carrying an explosive payload of around 100 pounds, and a range of as much as 1600 miles.
I frequently hear them fly by my apartment building in Kyiv and see Ukrainian anti-aircraft fire take them down out my window. The other people who hear these drones outside their windows are Israelis. The data from Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s civilians is used by the Iranians to produce better drones to attack Israeli civilians.
How long before terrorists or agents of our adversaries adopt the Russian tactics of hunting humans with drones?
We have shown a lack of imagination in anticipating the next big attack. Nobody saw Pearl Harbor coming. 9/11 was unimaginable until we saw a plane go into the second tower. The Israelis had Hamas’ plan for October 7 a year before the attack took place, but Israeli leaders could not imagine Hamas being able to carry it out.
Our adversaries are telegraphing a desire to join Putin in military incursions whether it is North Korea invaiding South Korea, China invading Taiwan or Iran attacking Israel. At some point, it will happen.
When it does, how do they attack America to keep the most powerful military force in the history of the world at bay?
Maybe Timur Praliev can spur our imagination.
Steven writes about a human phenomena - wait and see. Liberal democracies are hard to get in motion on emerging threats. The US Defense Dept is a microcosm of this challenge. I was one of those folks who puttered along the halls of the Defense Department for over two decades, working to make the Cold War-era system work as hijackers lined up commercial airliners full of innocent Americans. Russia, China, N Korea learned from 9/11. Use proxies and nibble us to death - whether it is nerve poison on door knobs (UK), observation balloons (US), incendiary devices on commercial planes (Germany, UK), now actual Russian mercenaries crossing into the US. We are past the time when we need to start playing dirty. From 2004-2006 (28 months) I was the Director of Counterterrorism Policy. Believe me, we know how to play dirty...just let us loose.