re: #321 JordanRules

I believe those mercenaries are tied to an oligarch who also has ties to Manafort

Putin has raised proxy warfare to an art form. We saw this in Ukraine. He does not send regular Russian forces, but works through a menagerie of deniable assets; private security contractors, local militias, volunteers in insurgent forces, even motorcycle gangs.
There is precedent. The Chinese never admitted that their regular forces fought in Korea. They were the “People’s Volunteers.” This was news to many of the conscripts who were captured: They not only had not volunteered, they sometimes didn’t know what part of the world they had been sent to fight in.