Boy, I am getting old. I was invited to do an interview on Sputnik News and was told the host is Dmitri Simes. I was expecting the man pictured above. Nope. Imagine my surprise when the young man in the video starts asking questions — I was being interviewed by Dmitri Simes Jr. Twenty-one years ago Dmitri’s father, Dmitri Simes Sr., hosted me, Pat Lang, Ambassador Joe Wilson, Charles Krauthammer, former CIA Director James R. Schlesinger and a few other experts at the Nixon Center in Washington, DC in December 2002 to discuss the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. I participated as a speaker and panelist at several events at the Nixon Center during Dmitri Sr.’s tenure there. Dmitri Sr. is a good man who was unfairly and wrongfully accused of being part of a Russia plot to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election.
He immigrated to the United States in 1973, seeking intellectual and political freedom; he had twice been expelled from university in Russia for protesting Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War.
Talk about irony –the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 treated Dmitri Sr. just like the Soviets in the 1970s, who viewed him as an enemy of the state. He came to America seeking a honorable political and judicial system and, forty years later, was a target of political persecution by a corrupt Department of Justice. Dmitri Sr. is now back in Russia and enjoying more freedom and dignity then he experienced in the United States. Anyway, his son is now working for Sputnik and is doing some fine work.
And here is a quick update on the Wagner Group, courtesy of the Russian Ministry of Defense:
Russian Armed Forces completed receiving weapons and military equipment from units of Wagner Group in accordance with the plan
◽️ More than 2,000 items of equipment and armaments have been handed over. (https://t.me/mod_russia_en/8375) This includes hundreds of units of heavy weapons: T-90, T-80, T-72B3 tanks, Grad and Uragan multiple-launch rocket systems, Pantsir surface-to-air missile systems, 2S1 Gvozdika 122 mm self-propelled artillery systems, 2S3 Akatsiya 152 mm, 2S5 Giatsint 152 mm, 2S4 Tulpan 240 mm, howitzers and anti-tank guns, mortar systems, multipurpose armoured tractors, armoured personnel carriers, as well as motor vehicles and small arms.
◽️ Among the transferred equipment, dozens of units have never been used in combat conditions.
◽️ More than two and a half thousand tonnes of ammunition and about 20,000 small arms have also been received.
◽️ Heavy tracked equipment, high-power self-propelled artillery units and tanks are being transported to field bases by wheeled tractors on trawls in order to prevent damage to paved roads. Wheeled vehicles arrive on their own.
◽️ All equipment and armaments are transported to rear areas, where repair and recovery units of the Russian Armed Forces carry out maintenance and prepare them for use for their intended purpose.
Looks like the reports that the Wagner commanders and their troops were balking at integrating into the Russian Army were not true.