Protest Movement in Eastern Ukraine: Security Forces Integrated by Foreign Mercenaries Hired by Private U.S. Military Outfit
by Dmitry Rogulin
Report first published on March 25, 2014
Ukrainian authorities plan to attract US private military company Greystone Limited to suppress protest moods of the mostly Russian-speaking population in the east of the country.
According to Ukrainian Security Service, mercenaries will be engaged in political search and protection of state security over inability of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to curb on leaders and activists of pro-Russian movement independently.
This initiative was put forward by oligarchs Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a co-owner of Ukraine’s PrivatBank, and Serhiy Taruta, head of the industrial union of Donbass, a coal basin in eastern Ukraine, as these business tycoons were appointed as governors in central Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk region and eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, respectively. A source in the Ukrainian Security Service which participated in a recent special meeting chaired by the parliament-appointed interim President Oleksandr Turchynov reported about this fact.
“Turchynov believes that law enforcement agencies in eastern regions cannot settle the issue of pro-Russian movement themselves, so they decided to attract foreign mercenaries,” the security official said. “In debates over action plan Kolomoyskyi proposed “not to re-invent a bicycle”, because there are real people who have a clear idea how much and how to pay,” he said.
Greystone security service is registered on Caribbean islands Barbados. The company recruits people from different countries through its subsidiary Satelles Solutions Inc. The company promises to its clients to provide “best military from the whole world” to fulfill tasks in any part of the world up to large-scale operations.
Private military company Greystone Limited was established 47 years ago and has British roots, as veterans of British commandoes SAS registered a basic organization of mercenaries in 1967.
The company was called WatchGuard International and drew attention to itself after an abortive first large-scale operation — an attempt on the life of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1971. Then the organization has undertaken the second operation already with retired US commandoes Navy SEALs during the US war in Iraq in 2003-2011, when major corporations used actively Greystone services. Now Greystone Limited is one of branches of a big mercenary empire in the United States which changes its names constantly, as this was Blackwater until 2009, then Xe Services and Academi and now US Training Center.
Murders, shootings of demonstrations, arms smuggling entailed ill fame through all flashpoints in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Now Ukraine is next in line. But today there is no exact information about the volume of the market of private military services, as it is estimated only approximately at $200 billion annually.
US high-ranking officials have always occupied key posts in the empire of soldiers of fortune — from the US State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center and US intelligence services.
