Last Updated on March 1, 2023
An American Army veteran who spent a year fighting in Ukraine’s Foreign Legion has defected to Russia, bringing with him tangible evidence and first-hand accounts of widespread Ukrainian Nazism and war crimes. He also says that Americans are on the ground in Ukraine, communicating directly with CIA handlers as they help coordinate attacks on Russian troops.
John McIntyre, an American southerner and US Army veteran who joined others from around the world in soliciting his services to the Ukrainian Foreign Legion has defected to Russia and described the war crimes and open Nazism he witnessed in NATO-backed Ukraine during an exclusive sit-down interview with RT in Moscow.
“When I came [to Ukraine],” McIntyre told RT, “I was really surprised. Everybody had tattoos and Nazi symbolism.”
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When he was asked by the Ukrainians why he was fighting in the war as a foreigner, he told them that he was there to stand up against Russian “Nazis” and “fascists,” only to be told that “the Russians aren’t the Nazis, we are the Nazis,” by his Ukrainian comrades and other neo-fascists who poured into the fight from all over Europe.
McIntyre told RT that he personally knew foreign fighters who had committed war crimes by executing Russian prisoners and that others had committed hideous acts of torture, something he says the Ukrainians and their foreign comrades like to laugh and joke about.
“A lot of captured Russian soldiers, they’ll take and cut their genitalia with a knife and everything and cut their stomachs open, slit their throats, cut their heads off and stuff like that. Really horrible stuff,” said McIntyre.
And it isn’t just Russian soldiers who have fallen victim to Ukrainian war crimes. Civilians, McIntyre said, have been targeted by the Ukrainians in pro-Russian separatist regions like the Donbas, and civilian homes and community centers, like schools, are routinely used as shields.
While McIntyre told RT that he was acting as a “spy” against the Ukrainians the entire time he was there, it’s unclear if this is actually true, or if he became disillusioned with the Ukrainian cause after witnessing their conduct first-hand. Nevertheless, the tale of his escape to Russia is harrowing. To escape, McIntyre contacted his family and received $300, before boarding a flight from Odessa to Istanbul, and later to Moscow, fearing for his life the entire time.
McIntyre described to RT how the Ukrainians deal with spies and whistleblowers, saying that they receive a “bullet to the back of the head,” and that it’s quite a regular occurrence, as multiple fighters have simply “disappeared” after being suspected of reporting war criminals.
“And we’re supporting these guys?” McIntyre said of American and NATO involvement in the war. “And these are supposed to be our allies? And we’re supposed to put them in NATO with us? And they can’t even follow the Geneva Convention?”
Far from only supporting the Ukrainians with massive shipments of weapons and cash, McIntyre told RT that the United States has men on the ground in Ukraine, maintaining direct communications with their handlers from the CIA and other American agencies notorious for meddling in global conflict zones and unstable nations.
One of them, a US Navy intelligence officer who McIntyre fought alongside, used a satellite phone to stay in constant contact with his American bosses.
“Every day he would call his contacts and he would get information about the positions, troops movements, and so on,” McIntyre told RT.
