The co-founder of the infamous Azov Brigade, Giorgi Kuparashvili, toured the U.S. Congress last week, first meeting with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). Kuparashvili was accompanied by two more Azov soldiers (Vladyslav Zhaivoronok and Artur Lypka) and the wife of his protege, Denys Prokopenko. (Prokopenko was just freed in last week’s prisoner exchange, and is one of the five Azov leaders confined to Turkey for the duration of the fighting.)
More meetings were reported yesterday, by the head of Kiev’s “Anti-Corruption Action Center,” Daria Kaleniuk, who said that the Azov soldiers had meetings with Senators Joni Ernst, Dan Sullivan, Shelley Moore, Jeanne Shaheen, and other lawmakers to discuss more weapons for Ukraine. Kaleniuk also reported that they met with the State Department’s Head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination, Jim O’Brien, to lobby for designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and to seize $300 billion in Russian sovereign funds located abroad so that Ukraine can use it to buy modern weapons. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was also photographed with the Azov soldiers. https://twitter.com/dkaleniuk/status/1574457639022596116/photo/1
Kuparashvili has been fighting ‘for his native Georgia’ and against Russia for over two decades. That includes in Kosovo and Iraq. He also fought in the Georgian invasion of Abkhazia in 2008, and served as a bodyguard for Georgia’s former President Saakashvili. He moved with Saakashvili to Ukraine in 2014, and there co-founded the Azov Battalion. In 2016, he established the Yevhen Konovalets Military School, named after an OUN founder. When he moved to Ukraine, his wife and children were placed in Great Britain, where they now live.
