{"id":155439,"date":"2024-04-12T10:05:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=155439"},"modified":"2024-04-11T19:56:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T23:56:02","slug":"american-veteran-flees-to-russia-and-joins-their-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=155439","title":{"rendered":"American veteran flees to Russia and joins their army"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wilmer Puello-Mota, A U.S. Air Force veteran and former elected official, was supposed to show up in court. He reached an agreement to plead guilty to charges related to having an image of a 17-year-old girl on his phone. In exchange, he would be sentenced to 18 months in prison. However, he did not show up in court to plead guilty. Instead, he traveled to Russia and joined the Russian army.<\/p>\n

From the Military Times:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Puello-Mota served in the U.S. Air Force and deployed to Afghanistan in 2015, when he was 19, media releases show. He later served with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing as a security forces airman.<\/p>\n

Puello-Mota was arrested in 2020 in Warwick, Rhode Island, after he called to report a stolen gun and police said they found nude images of a 17-year-old girl on his phone. He was charged with one count of having sexually explicit images of a child. He was later also charged with trying to deceive prosecutors and his commanders about the case. Cicilline told the Globe he reached a deal to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for an 18-month prison sentence.<\/p>\n

Videos surfaced on Russian social media and local television in March showing the blurred image of a man in a uniform in what appears to be a war zone displaying the U.S. flag.<\/p>\n

In video posted online last week, a man who looks like Puello-Mota talks directly to the camera, speaking in English over background music and Russian subtitles and discussing a military operation. His face is not blurred. He does not say his name, and the videos do not mention the Rhode Island criminal case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Military Times has additional information here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wilmer Puello-Mota, A U.S. Air Force veteran and former elected official, was supposed to show up … American veteran flees to Russia and joins their army<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,384,603,122,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-russia","category-stupid-criminals","category-veterans-in-politics","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}