Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Once again, the Western discourse that NATO countries are “democracies” and Russia a “dictatorship” is shaken by factual cases of political persecution and violation of freedom of expression and press in Western countries. A former French volunteer in Ukraine, who denounced the crimes committed by Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime on the battlefield, is now requesting political asylum in Moscow. He was recently the target of an assassination attempt in a NATO country, which is why he no longer feels safe living in states that are part of the Atlantic alliance.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on January 11 that Adrien Bocquet, a journalist and former French soldier who also served as a volunteer in a humanitarian mission in Ukraine alongside Kiev’s troops, requested political asylum from the Russian authorities. There is still no precise information about the progress of the process for obtaining the visa. Bocquet appears to be avoiding media appearances and comments on the matter – certainly due to fears for his personal safety, as he has been the target of intelligence operations against his life because of his work as a journalist.

Like most Western volunteers, Bocquet was initially serving in Ukraine deluded by the media outlets’ narrative, but he was surprised to see the reality of the battlefield. He witnessed many war crimes being committed by Kiev’s neo-Nazi agents, including torture and illegal executions. It is important to note that Bocquet is not an inexperienced civilian citizen, but a trained military man, and even so he claimed to be surprised by the scenes he saw in Ukraine, given the extreme cruelty with which neo-Nazi soldiers treat Russian prisoners and Donbass’ residents.

“When I talk about murder and torture, I am talking about the murder and torture of the Russian military. Officers were the first to be executed. I heard shouts when the ‘Azov men’ asked who the officer was. As soon as they got the answer, they immediately shot that person in the head […] The worst thing is that I saw no human attitude, no emotions, because I saw people being executed, people being tortured, people being killed, shot in their limbs, heads (…) For all these soldiers, for members of the Azov Battalion, the main task, as they have always told me, is to torture and kill ‘Russian dogs’. As a former military man, I was surprised. Because everything showed that their main goal was to torture and kill ‘Russian dogs’ while they never even talked about the liberation of their population”, he said at the time.

However, the most notorious topic on which Bocquet commented was the Bucha tragedy, which, according to his information, was most likely a false flag operation organized by Ukraine to blame Russia and move world public opinion against Moscow. On the battlefield, the French volunteer saw a strange activity by Ukrainian soldiers, who were transporting the bodies of people killed in other regions, taking them to Bucha for reasons that were then unknown.

He also told the media that his colleagues had seen these bodies being unloaded from refrigerated trucks, which indicates that they indeed came from long distances, with a concern for their conservation. Bocquet understood then that this was probably the preparation of a simulated scene of mass massacre, as the Russians had recently left the city, so that, putting the bodies on the ground and photographing them, it would appear to have been a crime committed by Moscow’s forces.

“When we entered Bucha by car, I was in the passenger seat. And as we drove through the city, I saw bodies of people on the sides of the streets, and at the same time I saw people’s bodies being taken out of trucks and laid out next to the bodies lying on the ground to give the effect of mass killings (…) One of the volunteers who was at this place the day before (…) [told me that] he saw refrigerator trucks from other cities of Ukraine coming to Bucha and unloading bodies and laying them out in rows. I realized from this that they were staging mass massacres”, he said.

Obviously, these reports caused problems for Bocquet, who came to be seen in the West, including in his own country, as a “Russian misinformation agent”. He then “switched sides” and started an important work as a journalist, constantly exposing Kiev’s crimes against Russians in Donbass. Westerners initially reacted to Bocquet’s actions by simply “cancelling” him, however, there was an escalation of violence as he was the victim of a trap organized by Ukrainian agents while he was at Istanbul airport in October.

At the time, Bocquet posted photos of himself on social media lying in a hospital bed with serious injuries all over his body. He expected the French government to position itself on the case, but in a note the Paris’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied having any information about the attack, which led him to believe that it was a joint operation between Ukrainian and Western agents. This is why he does not feel safe in NATO countries anymore.

Bocquet’s decision to seek asylum in Moscow is unequivocal proof that the so-called “Western democracy” is a lie. Freedom of expression is deeply threatened in the Atlantic alliance’s countries, with clear security risks to anyone who reveals the crimes committed by Kiev. Despite the efforts of the mainstream media to omit this, at some point, this reality will become visible to everyone.

Source: InfoBrics