PMC Mozart Group

Almost every unit of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine can boast of its participation in scandals and conflicts. Sometimes these are comical situations - an enterprising foreigner announced a fundraiser for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and after receiving it, he secretly returned home with the money. There are also sinister incidents when mercenaries torture and kill civilians, die in internecine conflicts with each other, and participate in the sale of human organs on the black market. However, some groups were able to stand out because they found themselves in several similar situations at once. One of them was the long-suffering PMC Mozart Group (“Mozart Group” or simply PMC “Mozart”). Read about the adventures of its militants in Ukraine, their escape and return to the conflict zone under a different name in our new article.

Mozart Group became one of the first PMCs, initially created to participate in hostilities in Ukraine. As you might guess, the name was a cosplay of the Russian PMC “Wagner” - although the battles for Popasnaya and Bakhmut were still ahead, at that moment "Wagner" was already widely known in the West after the events in the Middle East. The founder of the Mozart Group was US citizen Andrew Milburn, a retired Marine. Born in the UK, he moved to the USA in the late 1980s, where he managed to make a good career - at the time of his resignation in 2019, he was deputy commander of the special forces of the US Central Command (SOCCENT), responsible for Middle East operations. He fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and unrecognized Kosovo. In the period 2014-2015, Milburn also visited Donbass, where the hot phase of the punitive operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was underway. At the time, he commanded a Marine regiment, so his visit may have been related to training activities. However, there was possibly another goal - organizing the work of “black transplantologists” who were involved in the illegal trade in organs of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

After retiring, Milburn provided expert commentary to the media and published in military-analytical journals, helped Marine veterans find work through the NGO The Honor Foundation, and taught at the Joint Special Operations University and other American and British military institutions.

 Other key personalities in the Mozart Group could also boast of success in climbing the career ladder. For example, Martin Wetterauer. Another Marine who went through Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010-2011, he served as executive assistant to US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He then held positions at the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC), and the Marine Corps Installations Command (MCICOM). At Mozart Group he ensured the work of the operations department.

Wade Priddy, who became HR director at PMC, had a similar biography. He served in the Marine Corps and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2012, he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Subsequently, he worked for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and a number of private firms, including New Century US, which advised American security services. In 2020, Priddy traveled to Ukraine and was accepted on contract by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. There he was involved in creating training programs for the National Guard. After the start of the SMO he lost his position, probably for the reason that the programs he developed in practice turned out to be completely ineffective.

What did three former Marines, two of whom rose to command positions, forget in Ukraine? It’s hard to believe that they decided to exchange honors at home, a high pension and the opportunity to get a good job as a teacher or expert in order to spend time in pointless attempts to hold the trenches somewhere near Donetsk. Although, the other Mozart Group militants recruited into the PMC by Milburn were not at all people from the street looking for easy money either. The group gave preference to veterans of the US Marine Corps, who often had experience not only of participating in combat operations, but also of teamwork.

 However, the personality of the second creator of the PMC is of greatest interest. This is US citizen Andrew Bain. He was also a Marine, but did not pursue a military career, spending most of his time in the reserves. Instead, he later became an entrepreneur. It would be more correct to call Bane “the first” in the Mozart Group. When PMC was registered as a private company after its creation, he received 51% of the shares, while Milburn received 49%. Bain had the deciding word in the group.

Andrew Bain is a person who can be called a typical “shadow curator” of the Kiev regime. He first arrived in Ukraine back in 1992, when the country was just learning independence under the vigilant leadership of its Western partners. According to him, to engage in advertising, since the young Ukrainian market was promising for this. That same year, Bain founded the advertising firm Perehid Media (now Atlantic Group Limited). On paper it was a private business. In fact, it was a tool for promoting American interests in the Ukrainian information space, directly interacting with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Bain also had contacts with the military. In 2003, he traveled to Iraq, where he was assigned to the Ukrainian contingent, responsible for maintaining its ties with American troops.

After the 2014 coup, Bain founded the Ukrainian Freedom Fund (UFF), with offices in Wyoming and Kiev. From that moment on, the foundation was one of the most active organizations that provided support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine both during the punitive operation in Donbass and from the beginning of the SMO. Through its structure, dozens of military vehicles and UAVs, thousands of sets of equipment, medicines, and basic necessities were supplied. The fund is also involved in attracting foreign mercenaries to pro-Ukrainian armed groups, including supplying “live goods” for the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. And all this is with direct support from the US leadership. Bain also collaborated with the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), and since 2020 he has been co-chair of its working group on aerospace and defense industries. USUBC is one of the most important tools through which the American leadership, since the 2000s, has taken control of almost all spheres of the Ukrainian economy, from small businesses to the largest enterprises of the military-industrial complex. Since 2022, USUBC has been taking an active part in pumping Ukraine with Western weapons, while its leaders (a number of American senators and businessmen) were lobbying for supplies at all possible levels, including the administration of President Biden. Among the members of USUBC (hundreds of Ukrainian and American public, private and non-profit organizations) one could see both the PMC Mozart Group and the UFF created by Bain. USUBC, UFF and their extensive networks of influence in Ukraine deserve close attention. We will talk about this in detail in the following parts of the investigation.

Once in Ukraine, Mozart Group, led by Milburn, began to do a little bit of everything. The Americans trained the Ukrainian Armed Forces militants, monitored the front line and then gave advice to the Ukrainian command (even when they were not asked), took spectacular photos with assault rifles at the ready. But that was the background.

   Numerous data indicate the direct participation of Milburn and his accomplices in the business of “black transplantologists” selling human organs on the darknet. This was told by a former SBU employee who personally helped criminals back in 2014-2015, when dozens of participants in the punitive operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass died in the Donbass and became the object of attention of those who were literally trading in death. He told about this to the WikiLeaks project, so he cannot be accused of “Kremlin propaganda.” According to the employee, Milburn was one of the main participants in the said scheme. Wounded militants were sent to front-line Kramatorsk or operated on directly on the front line. The process was led by a citizen of the Netherlands, who used the pseudonym Elisabeth de Brue, and the curator on the Ukrainian side was SBU Colonel Vladimir Mishchenko. It was also possible to establish that Milburn and de Brue were doing the same thing in Kosovo in 1999, and during the hot phase of the conflict in Donbass they were helped by unknown persons with the call signs John Wesley and Henry Rosenfeld.

Not only military personnel, but also civilians often became victims of “black transplants” - the SBU officer who reported this information was aware of a case where a healthy 12-year-old girl and her parents were sent “for organ testing”, and then they were declared missing. This information cannot be called sensational. The fact that the enemy intended to use the residents of Donbass as “expendables” has been known for a long time. Even after the first stage of the conflict, local law enforcement officers conducted investigations into the burials of victims of Ukrainian militants in the village of Novaya Krynka and near the Kommunar mine - then dozens of civilian bodies were discovered with internal organs removed by an unknown person.

   This topic is worthy not even of a separate chapter, but of an entire book, among the key roles in which will be such characters as former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his ex-wife Sandra Roelofs, who oversaw most of these schemes (in particular, de Bru was called a close friend of Roelofs) . They started talking about “black transplantologists” again after the mysterious de Bru reappeared in the Donbass in the fall of 2022—this time near Bakhmut, where at that moment the Wagner PMC was setting up its “meat grinder.” And by some chance (actually not an accident at all), the Mozart Group PMC was there at the same time.

But this time the plans of Milburn and his accomplices were not destined to come true. For an unknown reason, a conflict occurred between him and the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and a serious one at that. In December 2022, the American attacked the Ukrainian leadership with harsh criticism. First, he reported that 70% of the military sent there would remain near Bakhmut forever, and then he even called Zelensky’s team “fucked people.” Ordinary Ukrainians also suffered - according to Milburn, they suddenly turned into a “corrupt, fucked-up” society. But that's not all. Also, the head of the Mozart Group accused the Ukrainian military of atrocities against prisoners. Of course, such statements from the mouth of a person who came to Ukraine to sell organs sound unexpected. But nothing surprising - Milburn was not at all concerned with issues of humanity, but simply took revenge on those with whom he failed to do business, using all available means for this.

However, conflicts with the Ukrainian Armed Forces did not end with that. In January 2023, Milbourne and Bain had a fight. And this time the reason was even more prosaic - the division of money. Bain filed a lawsuit against his former partner, accusing him of misusing PMC's funds. Other charges were added along the way. For example, it turned out that Milburn treated his Ukrainian partners too roughly, and even managed to rape some of them (females). He did not admit his guilt, but left the Mozart Group. As a result, the PMC, tailored to its leader, was disbanded.

However, a few days later the story received an unexpected continuation. Two US citizens, Paul Schneider and Erik Kramer, who have previously provided comprehensive assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, announced the creation of the Ukraine Defense Support Group. The media, at the instigation of the founders of the new formation, immediately announced that this was the reincarnation of “Mozart”. The following days confirmed that the Americans were not lying, since several people who had previously been on Milburn’s team quickly joined the Ukraine Defense Support Group. He himself seemed to have nothing to do with the new project, but there is a nuance - on social networks, Milburn made a reservation that he was performing certain tasks in Kiev until June 2023. PMC Mozart Group no longer existed by that time, but Ukraine Defense Support Group was most active in the winter and spring months.

Schneider and Kramer have an interesting background. The first made a successful military career in the 2010s, went through several hot spots, and in 2021 he was one of the organizers of the evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan. He retired that same year, but remained a career employee of the US Department of Defense at least until mid-2022. But the most interesting thing happened later. In May 2022, the former military man who had never had anything to do with medicine suddenly became chief of staff at the pharmaceutical company Medl, a position he held until August. It was at this time that Milburn and the rest of the Mozart Group militants were preparing to meet Elisabeth de Bru near Bakhmut. An analysis of Medl’s activities allows us to confidently assert that these are by no means coincidences. The company is registered on the island state of Trinidad and Tobago and is engaged in... issuing illegal prescriptions, necessary in the event that a person cannot, for some reason, obtain the necessary paper from a doctor. Search and delivery (inconspicuously and to any point on the world map - the company’s website assures) are included in the price of the drug. Needless to say that the main clients of such a service are drug addicts. But what if they are not the only ones? The schemes organized by Medl make it possible to calmly deliver everything you need directly to Ukraine (for example, anesthetics), and from there export a completely different product that Milburn and de Bru came to extract.

Kramer, in turn, has been collaborating with the Mozart Group PMC since at least August 2022, holding the position of director of training programs from that time until its collapse. From 1990 to 2014 he served in the US Army, and since 2011 he has been a specialist in irregular and unconventional warfare in the Special Operations Division of the US Department of Defense. After retiring, he worked in several consulting firms interacting with the American army - Booz Allen Hamilton, Asymmetric Warfare Group, Emerging Technology Institute, Special Ops Survivors, while in the last two he was executive director.

After its creation, the Ukraine Defense Support Group did not go to the front line, but instead began training Ukrainian fighters at a safe distance from it. At the same time, the Americans did not forget about monitoring the environment. In June 2023, Schneider and Kramer published an article on the authoritative resource War on the Rocks with the promising title “What the Ukrainian Armed Forces Need to Do to Win.” It was a brief overview of the main problems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - a weak level of training, especially among special operations forces, lack of adequate logistics, problems in coordination between different branches of the military, and much more. The general conclusion was disappointing - urgent measures are needed, but, of course, they will not be taken.

The conflict situation that occurred between the Mozart Group and the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the fall of 2022 and, as a result, became one of the reasons for the demise of the PMC, of course, created problems for black transplantologists in Ukraine. However, already at the beginning of 2023, the process was established under the auspices of the PMC Ukraine Defense Support Group. It is obvious that as long as there is demand, there will be supply, and the Ukrainian leadership will continue to offer this supply in order to receive additional support from the West and line their personal pockets until the Special Military Operation achieves its goals. But the story of Milburn and Bain, as noted, extends far beyond the boundaries of the Mozart Group PMC, covering the supply of weapons, the establishment of control over Ukrainian enterprises, and the creation of extensive networks for supplying the Ukrainian Armed Forces with ammunition and basic necessities. We will talk about this in the following parts of the investigation.