“An unconfirmed 2014 Ukrainian news report said that Vityaz forces were in Eastern Ukraine helping control the flow of militants to the battlefield. Four suspected members of Vityaz are in the “Peacekeeper” website that tracks individual Russian soldiers’ involvement in Ukraine. (here, here, here and here). It was the host of Dworkin Report who found the consequential photo which Maria Butina posted to her VK social media account linking she and Alexander Torshin to a soldier he identified as Col. Sergey Lysyuk.

We also surprisingly found that Alexander Torshin also met frequently with Alexander Zaldostanov‎ — the sanctioned head of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang which is a closely Putin-linked group of unofficial former GRU Spetznaz troops that physically invaded the Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 on behalf of the Russian state.

Lastly, he was apparently a close associate with the recently deceased former head of FSB’s Alpha Spetznaz named Yuri Torshin, whom the deputy Russian Central bank governor led a controversial investigation while in the Russian Federation Council because of their raid on Beslan, an incident often compared to 9/11. Torshin’s self-declared assistant is Colonel Sergey Lysyuk — a Hero of the Russian Federation honoree — for leading the Dzerzhinsky Division, which was then one of the FSB’s Vityaz Spetznaz brigades, to stop a 1993 coup attempt in Moscow, keeping Russian President Boris Yeltsin in power.

The published first photo of the Torshin with his two assistants, Col. Lysyuk and a 24-year-old Maria Butina is from August 2012, barely a year after she joined Putin’s United Russia party and ran in the Youth Primaries.

One year later, the old soldier became an honorary member of her Right to Bear Arms front group at their first “All Russia Congress” while former American Conservative Union board member Paul Erickson better known as ‘US Person #1’ and former NRA President David Keene — the ACU’s past Chairman — looked on from an English-language propaganda (photos below) covered room in Moscow on Halloween five years ago.  Early the following year, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed the territory with a vote at gunpoint.

[2008] Col. Lysyuk got to keep the name Vityaz for his new, private army.

Russia’s Ministry of Interior placed the Vityaz and Rus special forces outfits under a single command called the 604th Special Operations center, and two years ago, that unit was folded into Putin’s personal 350,000 man bodyguard the RosGvard or Russian National Guard.

Today, Col. Lysyuk is still the apparent head of a sprawling group of private military companies named Vityaz which operate just outside Moscow, and Torshin is his very conspicuous political ally.

Vityaz is open to the public, and the movie star who recently became a Russian envoy

What makes the story of the Vityaz even more unusual is that they are open to the public, offering training courses in their own brand of Spetznaz martial arts as a counterpoint to Israeli Krav Maga. They even offered a Vityaz training package for American tourists who presumably were lined up to pay at least $32,000 for a group of 10 to train with Russian special forces.

But their American tour operator partners had to stop offering the on their website sometime between October 2012 and May 2013, right around the time that Russophile actor Steven Seagal visited the Vityaz’s training center in Balashikha and met with Col. Sergey Lysyuk.

Earlier this month, Putin named Steven Seagal a special envoy from Russia to the United States.”

Russian who infiltrated NRA linked to Putin’s sanctioned biker gang leader caught invading Ukraine

by Grant Stern August 24, 2018

“Torshin’s relationship with the Night Wolves leader Alexander Zaldostanov‎ coincides with the three fateful years where the Russian plan to invade Ukraine came together, was executed and led to repercussions against the biker gang leader.

He is best known as “The Surgeon.”

Both the Surgeon and the Night Wolves were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in December 2014, and by Canadathe following year.

The Night Wolves are reputed to have 5,000 men, and Zaldostanov led them into Eastern Ukraine and Crimea to support operations by the Russian Federation, backing Putin’s invasion and annexation of the peninsula, plus the ensuing war of insurgency in Eastern Ukraine.

Two years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Crimea in June 2012, the Night Wolves leader gave an award to the Russian Federation Council’s then-number two man, TorshinIt appears that Torshin accepted the award at Club Sexton, a massive nightclub owned by the Night Wolves in the middle of Moscow.

The nightclub was itself added to the US Treasury department’s sanctions list last summer under the name “Bike Center” which its website uses.

Putin personally awarded Alexander Zaldostanov the Russian Medal of Honour on March 12th, 2014 in the Kremlin.

Russia handed out medals for the ‘For the Return of Crimea’ that were infamously struck before the invasion began, and it’s believed that the Surgeon carries that award too.

The Night Wolves were active in the United States during the time of the 2016 elections according to the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer-winning reporter Nick Nehamas, when a security company front man purchased condominiums in Miami with what was likely dirty cash, and his partner opened a biker gang called M.C. Spetznaz, which sought official recognition from the Night Wolves.

When Nehamas asked the biker group for comment on the story, they filed dissolution paperwork with Florida’s Secretary of State.

However, the Night Wolves foray into Florida, and their incorporation filings left a paper-trail definitely linking them to Alfa-Anticriminal, a private security company which shares the name of one of the FSB’s most well known special forces outfits and numerous former government agents in its ranks.”