Igor Mangushev
Игорь Мангушев
Mangushev in Olive green military clothing and a ballistic helmet, with a rifle over his shoulder and a first aid kit on his hip giving a thumbs-up signal towards the photographer
Mangushev in Ukraine, c. 2023
Born
Igor Leonidovich Mangushev

(1986-08-16)16 August 1986
Moscow, Russian SFSR
Died8 February 2023(2023-02-08) (aged 36) †
Kadiivka, Ukraine
Cause of deathGunshot
Occupations
  • Mercenary
  • political advisor
Years active2009–2023
EmployerRussian people's militias in Ukraine
Organizations
Call signBereg (Russian: Берег)

Igor Leonidovich Mangushev (Russian: Игорь Леонидович Мангушев; 16 August 1986 – 8 February 2023), also known by his radio call sign Bereg (Russian: Берег), was a Russian mercenary and political advisor.

Born in Moscow during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Mangushev grew up harboring Russian nationalist views. In 2009, he founded the nationalist organization Svetlaya Rus in 2009 and subsequently established E.N.O.T. Corp., a private military company. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mangushev served as an officer in an anti-drone warfare platoon. In a speech given by Mangushev in 2022, during which he held a skull that he claimed was from a Ukrainian soldier killed during the siege of Mariupol, he outlined his rationale for the Russo-Ukrainian War; Mangushev sought to destroy Ukrainian national identity and terminate the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state. According to his widow, he dreamed of seeing Kyiv burning.[1]

In addition to his military activities, he worked as a political operative for various Kremlin agencies and an internet troll for the Internet Research Agency.

On 4 February 2023, Mangushev was shot in the back of the head while in the Luhansk Oblast. He died on 8 February while in hospital. His widow has called for an investigation into his death, describing his killing as an assassination and alleging that medical care was inappropriately withheld from her husband in the days before his death.

Early life

Igor Mangushev was born on 16 August 1986 in Moscow, Russian SFSR.[2][3]

Mangushev grew up to become a Russian nationalist,[4][5] founding the organisation Svetlaya Rus (Russian: Светлая Русь) in late 2009.[6] Mangushev, in his role leading Svetlaya Rus, coordinated with police and conducted raids on illegal migrants living within unlicensed dwellings in the Russian Federation.[7] Following the raids on immigrant dwellings, Mangushev would contact local Russian police, who would take note of the illegal migrants, fingerprint them, and typically release them.[7][8] His group was among the first such public-private partnerships in Russia to conduct these sorts of operations following the 2011 arrest of Russian pilots in Tajikistan.[6]

By 2012, Mangushev's connections with militant patriotic groups in Russia had strengthened, and he founded and took the helm of E.N.O.T. (Russian: Енот),[8][9] which was founded to coordinate Russia's nascent militarised patriotic movement.[8]

According to documents leaked by Anonymous, Mangushev had become an employee of the Internet Research Agency by 2013.[10] Kommersant reported in 2015 that Mangushev had written strategic analyses for various Russian government agencies prior to the 2014 onset of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[6] He publicly spoke about his work as an internet troll, stating that he had written messages online both in favour and in opposition to 2013 Alexei Navalny mayoral campaign as a part of his work.[11]

Military career and mercenary work

Mangushev worked as captain in the Luhansk People's Republic People's Militia,[12] and as a mercenary.[4] Through E.N.O.T. Corp., he deployed as a fighter in the Russo-Ukrainian War beginning in 2014,[9][13] though E.N.O.T. had claimed at the time that it was simply providing humanitarian assistance to individuals living in Donbas.[14]: 131–132  Mangushev was an active proponent of the formation and use of private military companies in the war, seeing them as a way to unify the citizens' militias with a more structured organisation that could provide documentation of the militia's military activities.[6]

In 2015, Mangushev continued to fight in Russian-occupied Luhansk[6] and in December 2018 he was part of a three-person Russian contingent that was delegated to Central African Republic's capitol city Bangui to take part in the Central African Republic Civil War.[15] Mangushev provided support to the Russian state media funded Radio Lengo Songo.[15] Mangushev also worked as a political strategist for Yevgeny Prigozhin,[4] the Russian oligarch,[16] and then-controller of Wagner Group.[17] The strategy work included disinformation efforts,[18] and the organisation of agent provocateurs to work against opposition politician Lyubov Sobol during the 2019 Moscow City Duma election.[19][10]

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mangushev led Russia's anti-drone platoon[18] and used the call sign Bereg.[20] The platoon sought out and destroyed Ukrainian drones by identifying and interrupting their WiFi signals with technology developed by Mangushev and his team.[21] Mangushev was a vocal proponent of the war and a critic of some Russian military leaders who he perceived as hesitant and making slow progress in the war.[13][5] He claimed to be the inventor of the Z symbol[20][22] and was often photographed posing with a Nazi salute.[20]

Mangushev operated the Telegram channel Notes of an Adventurer.[23] In August 2022, a video circulated showing him appearing on a stage in a Russian nightclub[13] holding a skull that he claimed was from a Ukrainian soldier who died in the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works during the siege of Mariupol.[4][24] While on stage with the skull, he stated that he sought the destruction of Ukraine as a nation-state and that Russia's goal in the invasion of Ukraine was to destroy the Ukrainian national identity.[22] Mangushev's widow said that he took the skull from the ruins of Azovstal because "one friend's wife wanted a skull of a Ukrainian very much".[25]

Shooting, death, and aftermath

On the night of 4 February 2023, at a checkpoint in Kadiivka, Mangushev was shot in the back of the head.[12] At the time, he had been stationed in Kadiivka as a soldier in the Russo-Ukrainian War.[4] He was struck by a 9 mm bullet at close range,[4] and afterwards was taken to a hospital in Kadiivka.[20] He died in the hospital on 8 February 2023, aged 36.[18]

His wife described his death as an execution,[4] and his friends have called for an official investigation into his death.[18] British political scientist Mark Galeotti described the shooting as a "hit",[20] while Mangushev's widow alleged that medical care was being intentionally withheld from her husband in the days between the shooting and his death.[26]

Mangushev's body was cremated under strict supervision of his family because, as his widow explained, a US$70,000 prize was offered for his skull in response to his performance, and the family was seriously concerned that someone from the morgue or crematory will be tempted to covertly remove and sell it.[1]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Sochnev, Aleksey (21 March 2023). ""Он мечтал увидеть горящий Киев". Вдова капитана Игоря Мангушева — о его загадочной смерти, бездействии следователей и черепе с "Азовстали"" ["He dreamed of seeing Kiev burning". The widow of Captain Igor Mangushev - about his mysterious death, inaction of investigators and the skull from Azovstal.]. RTVI (in Russian). Archived from the original on 22 March 2023. Retrieved 22 March 2023.
  2. ↑ "MANGUSHEV Igor Leonidovich". War and Sanctions. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption. 2022. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  3. ↑ "Мангушев Игорь Леонидович / Мангушев Ігор Леонідович / Mangushev Igor Leonidovich". Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine, Peace, Humanity, and the International Law. 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 4 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Notorious Russian nationalist Igor Mangushev shot dead in Ukraine". BBC News. 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  5. 1 2 Seddon, Max; Ivanova, Polina (18 March 2022). "Propaganda war rages as Russians face huge pressure to back invasion". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Tumanov, Grigorii (23 March 2015). "Послевоенные действия" [Post-war actions]. Kommersant (in Russian). Archived from the original on 21 August 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  7. 1 2 Khazov, Sergey (2014). "The Man in Orange". The New Times. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023 – via European Press Prize.
  8. 1 2 3 Polukhina, Yulia (22 February 2019). ""Еноты" в клетке: Как участники событий в Крыму и на Донбассе потеряли кураторов, деньги и свободу" [“Raccoons” in a cage: How participants in the events in Crimea and Donbass lost curators, money and freedom]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian). Archived from the original on 30 August 2022. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  9. 1 2 Goble, Paul. "Russian Nationalist Group, Acting as a Private Military Company, Worries Kremlin". Jamestown Foundation. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  10. 1 2 Korotkov, Denis (15 December 2019). "Выездное обслуживание: кто и как срывал выборы в Мосгордуму" [Field service: who and how disrupted the elections to the Moscow City Duma]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian). Archived from the original on 10 February 2020. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  11. ↑ Gorham, Michael S. (2017). "Humpty Dumpty and the Troll Factory: Varieties of Verbal Subversion on the Russian-Language Internet". Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie. 73 (1): 79–103. JSTOR 26583047. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2023 – via JSTOR.
  12. 1 2 "Умер командир подразделения Народной милиции ЛНР Мангушев" [The commander of the People's Militia unit of the LPR Mangushev died] (in Russian). RIA Novosti. 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  13. 1 2 3 Motyčková, Kateřina; Klapal, Ondřej (8 February 2023). "Kritik ruské armády a Prigožinův spojenec průstřel hlavy nepřežil" [The critic of the Russian army and Prigozhin's ally did not survive the headshot]. Seznam Zprávy (in Czech). Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  14. ↑ Mareš, Miroslav; Laryš, Martin; Holzer, Jan (2019). Militant Right-Wing Extremism in Putin's Russia: Legacies, Forms, and Threats. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429490019. ISBN 9780429953620. S2CID 158097204.
  15. 1 2 Vasilyev, Viktor (9 February 2023). "Что делал в Африке погибший в Донбассе капитан Мангушев (позывной Берег)" [What Captain Mangushev (call sign Bereg), who died in Donbass, was doing in Africa]. REGNUM News Agency (in Russian). Archived from the original on 8 August 2023. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  16. ↑ Lister, Tim; Ilyushina, Mary; Shukla, Sebastian (18 February 2018). "The oil field carnage that Moscow doesn't want to talk about". CNN. Archived from the original on 18 February 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  17. ↑ Echols, William (4 October 2019). "New Sanctions Against 'Putin's Chef' Prompt Latest Russian Election Meddling Denial". Polygraph.info. Archived from the original on 5 October 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  18. 1 2 3 4 "Pro-War Russian Nationalist 'Executed' in Eastern Ukraine". Moscow Times. 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  19. ↑ "Nationalist Igor Mangushev dies after being shot in back of head. His wife says he was deliberately murdered". The Insider (in Russian). 8 February 2023. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 Vasilyeva, Nataliya (5 February 2023). "Wagner-linked mercenary who claimed to have originated 'Z' war symbol shot in 'warning hit'". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 8 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  21. ↑ Grigoriev, Dmitrii (20 January 2023). "Война "Сурикатов" с "птицами". Как отряд антидронов охотится на БПЛА ВСУ" [War "Meerkats" with "birds". How a squad of anti-drones hunt UAVs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine]. Argumenty i Fakty (in Russian). Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  22. 1 2 "Создатель ЧВК "ЕНОТ" с черепом в руках заявил, что все украинцы должны быть убиты. По его словам, это череп защитника "Азовстали"" [The creator of PMC "raccoon" with a skull in his hands said that all Ukrainians should be killed. According to him, this is the skull of a defender of Azovstal]. The Insider. 28 August 2022. Archived from the original on 7 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  23. ↑ Meduza (18 March 2022). "Russia Unleashes World War Z". Transitions Online. Retrieved 10 February 2023 – via EBSCOhost.
  24. ↑ "Russian mercenary plays with Ukrainian soldier's skull – watch". The Jerusalem Post. 30 August 2022. Archived from the original on 5 February 2023. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  25. ↑ Mazurenko, Alona (22 March 2023). "Russian mercenary's widow cynically tells journalists where they found Ukrainian soldier's skull". Ukrainska Pravda. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  26. ↑ Davis, Barney (8 February 2023). "Igor Mangushev: Russian who waved Ukrainian skull on stage dies days after being shot". Evening Standard. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
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