Please be careful not to conflate the official confirmation with Kots’s writing that you’re quoting in the OP. This whole “they swore to never be captured” thing is not officially confirmed and there should be a disclaimer about that.

Other than that, I think it’s fair to assume this must’ve been happening since this November announcement:

“From that moment, the Ukraine conflict previously provoked by the West acquired elements of a global nature, just as we warned more than once,” Putin said on Thursday, in a televised address to the nation.

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/607999-putin-ukraine-conflict-global/

It makes sense that they participated in some combat, and I’m wondering why other anti-US countries like Venezuela aren’t at the very least sending generals to get some experience there.

Edit: Alexander Kots’s Wikipedia page is really funny:

Alexander Igorevich Kots (Russian: Александр Игоревич Коц; born 3 September 1978) is a Russian propagandist, fascist and war criminal promoting aggressive wars against independent states and genocide of their population.[a] He reports mostly for the tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and on his own channel on Telegram.

a: According to various international media such as Voice of America, British BBC, Ukrainian media, Israeli, Belarusian and others.

Indeed, it’s very strange that sovereign Ukraine is not the one negotiating this. They could just ignore Trump’s peace deal and keep on fighting without US support.

Surely they can manufacture their own weapons and fight their own war, and don’t need to bow down to US directives imposed from afar. Being the one holding the cards, they definitely don’t need to hear anything from Trump in order to negotiate with Russia.

Currently I don’t have any disposable income, but if I manage to get my shit together this year I probably would contribute a little bit. I find your posts really useful, and I hope they keep coming and are properly archived for future reference.