A high-ranking Russian Central Bank official ran a spy ring that infiltrated the NRA with the spy Maria Butina, however five years before meeting her, Alexander Torshin had another “Assistant” who runs a private army and appears to explain the real reason why Russia’s Taganskaya mafia calls him a “Godfather.”

Russia’s Taganskaya mafia is known to specialize in corporate raiding.

Russian Deputy Central Bank Governor Alexander Torshin has extremely tight ties to the elite Spetznaz commander in charge of Vityaz which means Knight/warrior, formerly a government special operations force, today it is a privatized security company and commando training center on the outskirts of Moscow.

Recently, members of Vityaz have been visually identified in Eastern Ukraine training soldiers in special forces tactics.

Eastern Ukrainian paratrooper salutes a trainer from the Vityaz. Source: DNR-Hotline

An unconfirmed 2014 Ukrainian news report said that Vityaz forces were in Eastern Ukraine helping control the flow of militants to the battlefield. Four suspected members of Vityaz are in the “Peacekeeper” website that tracks individual Russian soldiers’ involvement in Ukraine. (here, here, here and here)

It was the host of Dworkin Report who found the consequential photo which Maria Butina posted to her VK social media account linking she and Alexander Torshin to a soldier he identified as Col. Sergey Lysyuk.

Podcaster Scott Dworkin continued to review literally all of the rest of Butina and Torshin’s social media posts for this story, which will be featured throughout this series. The first three parts of The Torshin Files will be released today, and required an international team of experts to comment along with selfless assistance from other journalists on three continents to run down every lead, including some stories excluded as not relevant to this investigation.

Putin and Night Wolves commander Alexander Zaldostanov. Source: Putin’s official website as Prime Minister of Russia, July 2009.

We also surprisingly found that Alexander Torshin also met frequently with Alexander Zaldostanov‎ — the sanctioned head of the Night Wolves motorcycle gang which is a closely Putin-linked group of unofficial former GRU Spetznaz troops that physically invaded the Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 on behalf of the Russian state.

Lastly, he was apparently a close associate with the recently deceased former head of FSB’s Alpha Spetznaz named Yuri Torshin, whom the deputy Russian Central bank governor led a controversial investigation while in the Russian Federation Council because of their raid on Beslan, an incident often compared to 9/11.

“I have a suspicion that he is from the Soviet security services (the KGB) because all of his roles in government involved oversight and loyalty, not any specific skills,” says Ilya Zaslavskiy, who is the Oxford educated Head of Research at the Free Russia Foundation.

Alexander Torshin meets with his two assistants

Torshin’s self-declared assistant is Colonel Sergey Lysyuk — a Hero of the Russian Federation honoree — for leading the Dzerzhinsky Division, which was then one of the FSB’s Vityaz Spetznaz brigades, to stop a 1993 coup attempt in Moscow, keeping Russian President Boris Yeltsin in power

Today, Col. Lysyuk runs a private military operation just outside Moscow which appears to be the real muscle behind the NRA’s favorite Russian deputy central banker.

“[Vityaz] is an asymmetric warfare group,” says Malcolm Nance, the former naval intelligence officer, MSNBC contributor and author whose recent book “The Plot To Destroy Democracy” covers the birth of the Wagner private military company which has engaged in warfare against America’s military.

“Whereas ‘Putin’s Chef,’ Prighozin is an Erik Prince-level fixer for Putin, Alexander Torshin appears to be a subcommander who has some of the same responsibilities,” Nance says. “But Torshin appears to be different in that he uses his Moscow ties and links to Vityaz, and to the Nightwolves, and to the Russian orthodox church as his credentials which enabled Vladimir Putin to use him as the go to guy to infiltrate the NRA.”

The published first photo of the Torshin with his two assistants, Col. Lysyuk and a 24-year-old Maria Butina is from August 2012, barely a year after she joined Putin’s United Russia party and ran in the Youth Primaries.

Maria Butina presents Col. Lysyuk with Honorary Membership in Right to Bear Arms. Source: Guns.ru forum

In September 2012, Butina posted an entire album on Vk.com (Russia’s knockoff of Facebook) containing photos of herself and Torshin inspecting the Vityaz regiment on their private training grounds outside Moscow, including the cover image for this story.

Those images are still public.

One year later, the old soldier became an honorary member of her Right to Bear Arms front group at their first “All Russia Congress” while former American Conservative Union board member Paul Erickson better known as ‘US Person #1’ and former NRA President David Keene — the ACU’s past Chairman — looked on from an English-language propaganda covered room in Moscow on Halloween five years ago. (photos below)

US Person 1 Paul Erickson (far let center, wearing a blue jacket) and former NRA President David Keene to his right. Source: Right to Bear Arms website via Archive.org

Early the following year, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed the territory with a vote at gunpoint.

“I saw Maria Butina’s tactical shooting videos, she’s incredibly proficient. Her fluidity is stunning,” says Nance about the red-headed leader of Right to Bear Arms who now resides in an Alexandria, Virginia federal jail, “She’s been trained by someone professional, probably a spetznaz type. She’s probably not a GRU officer, but was likely trained as a subcontractor to execute this infiltration mission.”

The Vityaz began as the Soviet Union’s first SWAT team

The Vityaz Spetznaz are known for their distinctive maroon berets with two insignia pins, one of which still bears the old Hammer and Sickle of the defunct Soviet Union.

The Spetznaz is Russia’s highly trained special forces soldiers.

Vityaz means Knight.

The unit was formed initially to thwart terrorist attacks for the 1980 Winter Olympics, but it evolved into an armored infantry unit deployed in the near abroad former Soviet Republics, spending much of its time in the North Caucasus before the 2008 reorganization that created a private security company who moved to Moscow just two years later.

“I suspect it’s muscle that’s focused domestically,” says the Obama Administration’s former NSC Russia director Michael R. Carpenter, about the real use of private military companies in Russia.

“I do recall hearing that a private military company (PMC),” says Carpenter, “later adopted the Vityaz name and logo.”

“The oligarch(s) who fund Vityaz use it to protect their own assets and settle scores with adversaries,” Michael R. Carpenter wrote, “including through raiderstvo (corporate raiding).”

Col. Sergey Lysyuk holding the maroon beret of Vityaz in 2007 from Bratishka Magazine (Translation: Little Brother Magazine).

In early 2007, Col. Lysyuk’s Vityaz unit made international headlines because his soldiers were using an image of the poisoned former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko — who was poisoned with radioactive polonium tea in London — for target practice.

Just a few months later, Col. Lysyuk gave an interview to “Bratishka” — a magazine for the Special Forces named “Little Brother” in English — that he had a work-based relationship with the Russian Federation Council’s Alexander Porsirievich Torshin, the second overall official in their upper national legislative body.

Significantly, the Hero of the Russian Federation told Bratishka that:

“I work as an assistant to the deputy chairman of the Federation Council, Alexander Porsirievich Torshin.” “He is very serious about supporting special forces. He himself is ready to come forward with initiatives, including legislative ones, to provide material support for the activities of special forces, and to improve the social protection of servicemen and members of their families”

“On bare enthusiasm, it is impossible to carry out tasks. If the special forces provide security for the state [and] society,” continued Col. Lysyuk, “then the approach to their social protection must be [from the] state, not [based solely on] accounting.”

”You can not save [money] on spetsnaz, that’s what I want to say.”

The following year, Vityaz was partly privatized.

Col. Lysyuk got to keep the name Vityaz for his new, private army.

Russia’s Ministry of Interior placed the Vityaz and Rus special forces outfits under a single command called the 604th Special Operations center, and two years ago, that unit was folded into Putin’s personal 350,000 man bodyguard the RosGvard or Russian National Guard.

Today, Col. Lysyuk is still the apparent head of a sprawling group of private military companies named Vityaz which operates just outside Moscow, and Torshin is his very conspicuous political ally.

Alexander Torshin has made numerous appearances with Col. Lysyuk and the Vityaz over the years, indicating a regular and ongoing relationship.