Russian Mercenary Captured At Border

The problem with open borders is that they’re open borders, and you have no way to vet who is coming across. We already covered the strangely high number of Chinese nationals crossing the border, and now a Russian mercenary has been captured there…with a drone.

A former Russian mercenary was captured by U.S. Border Patrol agents near the city of Roma after he waded across the Rio Grande.

According to KVEO, Timur Praliev was reportedly carrying two passports—one from Russia and one from Kazakhstan—as well as $4,000 in U.S. cash and 60,000 Mexican pesos. Following a search of his backpack, Border Patrol agents discovered that he was also transporting a drone.

Nothing suspicious about that at all…

Praliev claimed to have previously worked for the Wagner Group, which is a Russian-backed paramilitary organization.

According to the criminal complaint against him, Praliev is a Kazakhstani national who was encountered by Border Patrol on January 4. He appeared in a McAllen courthouse on January 7.

Praliev pleaded guilty to the crime of illegally entering the country. U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker sentenced him to time served and imposed a fine.

Supposedly he’s still being held by the feds, but there’s nothing in the judge’s original order calling for his deportation.

More: Just last month this same mercenary was evidently honored by Russia.

A self-confessed veteran of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group arrested for crossing into the United States from Mexico was honored as a combat veteran weeks earlier by an organization established by Russian President Valdimir Putin, RFE/RL has found.

Timur Praliev, 31, was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents on January 4 near the border town of Roma, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States and told the agents he was a citizen of Kazakhstan, U.S. federal court records show.

Snip.

Online records reviewed by RFE/RL show that less than a month before his detention, a man of the same name had been honored at an event held by an official government veterans’ organization in Russia’s Bashkortostan region.

An account of the December 12, 2024, event was published on Russian social media by the Bashkortostan branch of Defenders Of The Fatherland Foundation. The group was established by Putin in April 2023 to support combat veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

You would think that Russian mercenaries coming across America’s southern border with military surveillance equipment would be of greater concern to the federal government, but here in the waning days of the Biden Administration, that would not appear to be the case.

I’d really like to know what sort of drone this theoretically Ex-Wagner mercenary was carrying…

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12 Responses to “Russian Mercenary Captured At Border”

  1. […] TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Russian Mercenary Captured At Border. “The problem with open borders is that they’re open borders, and you have no way to vet who […]

  2. Quartermaster says:

    You would think Putin supporters among the so-called MAGA types would be concerned. But they are as myopic as the Biden types are.

  3. 10x25mm says:

    “You would think Putin supporters among the so-called MAGA types would be concerned. But they are as myopic as the Biden types are.”

    The GRU is only now ramping up its subversion effort in America. ‘MAGA types’ pointed out the May 3rd shooting of Ramzan Daraev in Carthage, NC by a U.S. SOCOM Colonel. This was the first publically documented case of a GRU hunter-killer team operating within the United States, post February 2022. This was ignored by ‘Biden types’ as an anti-immigrant panic and national security paranoia provocation.

    The real threat is from the Chinese MSS. Our feckless Director of the FBI just claimed on ’60 Minutes’:

    “They have stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than that of every nation combined. But even beyond the cyber theft, there’s another part of the Chinese cyber threat that I think has not gotten the attention it desperately deserves: their pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure. They are lying in wait on those networks, ready to inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.”

    The MSS have even established “police stations” across America. On April 17, 2023, “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, were arrested for operating an illegal overseas police station in lower Manhattan for a provincial branch of the MSS.

    You have been warned.

  4. OldParatrooper says:

    I had mostly forgotten about the Ft Bragg shooting. It went quiet PDQ.

    Have the foreigners been positively identified as GRU?

  5. Tig If Brue says:

    The “myopic Biden types” are the assholes responsible for this mess. 100% of it. Reddit is that way troll.

  6. 10x25mm says:

    “Have the foreigners been positively identified as GRU?”

    Dead men tell no tales.

  7. Seawriter says:

    Fortunately apathy about the border ends in seven days.

    Too late to stop this guy the easy way, but I am sure he will turn up again and get a less friendly reception.

  8. Lubert Das says:

    Current border security caught one spy, how many managed to make it through? My guesstimate is at least 9 other hostile agents managed to make it across undetected.

    1/20/25 can’t come soon enough!

  9. Texasyankee says:

    I don’t understand why he would try to cross illegally. US visas aren’t the easiest thing to get but also not the hardest. Come in on a tourist visa, have credit and debit cards, buy a drone on Amazon, check Google maps for directions to any military installation, read the NY Times or Washinton Post for secrets and your mission will be accomplished.

  10. Lawrence Person says:

    Travel visas for Russians are lot harder to get thanks to Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, as visa service has been suspended at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. I can’t imagine that Poland is wild about letting Russians in to apply at the embassy in Warsaw, either.

    Also, remember that we don’t know precisely what sort of drone he was carrying, so we can’t blithely assume it was a commercial drone. It may have had electronic warfare capabilities, or an explosive payload to carry out attacks. We just don’t know.

  11. Texasyankee says:

    The fact that you can’t imagine something is not proof that someone else doesn’t imagine it. I don’t see any mention of Poland but that he had a Kazakhstan passport. I imagine (without evidence) that passport clerks in some embassies can be bribed. Even without bribery, there is much evidence of the incompetency of government employees. This guy got caught because he was stupid or sloppy. The competent ones don’t get caught.

    I also imagine (again without evidence) that a commercial drone can be upgraded with readily available parts. From my reading, the Ukrainians have built military drones from commercial parts. All it takes is knowledge and some skill.

  12. ruralcounsel says:

    If he was after Biden, they should release him.

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