RSSOnly one small correction. Russia doesn’t have PMCs. What Russia does have is ЧОП (=private security groups). Names of several members of one such group (Mar), which accompanied Russian humanitarian convoys to Donbass, were – as the result – posted on the Ukrainian nazi site Mirotvorets. They are the ones (and with the same spelling inaccuracies) that now appear on the RB’s ‘mercenaries” list (even though Mar itself stopped its operations and was dissolved in 2018).
The major problem with foreign ‘reporting’ on Russia is that it’s rarely done in good faith. I find https://twitter.com/27khv who’s been in Russia for several years now, to be a reliably honest source.
Vasilieva is the so called doctor (optometrist) who offered a diagnosis of “definite GRU poisoning” to foreign media by looking at a photo of another ‘pay-day-dissident’ Bykov when he reported feeling ill during a train ride after an all night party. Her “alliance” is just another bogus NGO.
Here is Moscow lawyer Volkova (of Pussy Riot fame) on Valisieva’s activity: https://twitter.com/volkova__v/status/1241026030741131265
Here’s Ilias Mercury (who documented Vasilieva’s sources of income) on her consistent efforts to destabilize situation in Moscow: https://twitter.com/imerkouri/status/1240956024942706693
The motto is that of Stalin: “No person, no problem.”
Historian N. Starikov, who works with Soviet archives, published a book analyzing Stalin’s most popular #quotes. He couldn’t find any source, neither in speeches, nor in published private conversations, that would ascribe this statement to Stalin. The phrase became widely known after a neoliberal playwright Edvard Rudzinsky used it in his book. However, his book is a work of fiction, & not a historic document.