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Russian Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev has earned the nickname “Butcher of Mariupol” for leading the harrowing attack on the Ukrainian city that reduced it to rubble.
Ukrainian military officials claim that Mizintsev orchestrated a similar attack in Syria and bombed the city of Aleppo. The attack in Mariupol involved the bombing of a theater that had identified itself as a children’s shelter — an attack that killed about 300 people seeking refuge at the time.
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Mizintsev, 59, is the head of the National Defense Management Center that Russia established in 2014 to guide future military operations.
Here’s what else you need to know about the man who sits in one of Russia’s most powerful seats.
SOVIET MANUFACTURE
Mizintsev was born in 1962, at the height of Soviet power, in a village about 400 miles outside of Moscow.
He quickly rose through the ranks, studying at the Kiev Higher Combined Arms Command School before becoming commander of a Soviet Army reconnaissance platoon in eastern Germany — the same region where KGB agent Vladimir Putin operated.
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After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mizintsev deployed to the Caucasus to command a motorized rifle battalion.
His return to Moscow in the late 1990s led to rapid promotion, culminating in a post in 2003 as head of the Chief of Staff’s Operations Directorate, a role entrusting him with military planning duties.
He then took control of the National Center for Defense Management, where he reportedly coordinated Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war between 2015 and 2016.
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SYRIAN OPERATIONS
Russia backed Syrian government forces with a series of airstrikes and hit Aleppo with attacks that killed around 1,700 civilians.
Russian forces reportedly used cluster and incendiary bombs and chemical weapons in residential areas, including hospitals.
UKRAINE
Mizintsev has served as the face of the Russian press in statements about the siege of Mariupol.
In video briefings, he calls the Ukrainians “bandits” and “neo-Nazis” and accuses them of “mass terror.”
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He is accused of ordering the attacks on several civilian infrastructure targets, including schools, hospitals and the theater that sheltered more than 1,000 civilians.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of Ukraine’s Civil Liberties Center, called on Mizintsev to stand trial in The Hague for war crimes.