Rafael Lusvarghi
Rafael Marques Lusvarghi (born November 14, 1984) is a Hungarian Brazilian former military, activist and policeman. After serving in the French Foreign Legion, the Brazilian Military Police and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, he became nationally known in Brazil for his arrest during the 2014 FIFA World Cup protests, afterwards going to the Luhansk People's Republic, where he fought for Russia and became a senior lieutenant for the Prizrak Brigade. After having returned to Brazil, he was arrested during a layover in Ukraine and condemned to thirteen years in prison in counts of terrorism and formation of an illegal paramilitary unit. Having been provisionally released by a court of appeal, he was suddenly captured in 2018 by Azov Battalion and C14 and taken to authorities, which hastened his trial, afterwards provisorily sentencing him on May 11 to sixty days in prison. On May 2, 2019, he was sentenced by a court in Ukraine to 13 years in prison for his willing participation as a terrorist and propagandist in Russia's waging of aggressive war on Ukraine. Lusvarghi was released (during a major prison exchange) and handed over to Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic representatives on 29 December 2019. On 3 November 2021, a Brazilian court sentenced Lusvarghi to eight years in prison for his alleged involvement in the illegal drug trade. Military career After finishing an agronomy vocational school, Lusvarghi allegedly went to France and, in November 2002, enlisted in the Foreign Legion, where he served for three years, at first participating in the 4th Foreign Regiment, and then in the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, through which he allegedly participated in missions in Africa before being harmed and returning to Brazil. Back to his native country, he became a soldier in the Military Police of São Paulo State between 2006 and 2007, afterwards serving in Pará as he sought the officer career, leaving the institution as a cadet in 2009 and going to Russia in 2010, where he studied medicine in the Kursk State University, was nicknamed Rurik and became notorious in his home country after witnessing the accidental death of a fellow Brazilian, then also studying medical sciences. In Russia, Lusvarghi allegedly worked in the children's school Udmurtija and tried to enter the Russian Ground Forces, but, not being able to, he returned to South America, where he claims to have entered the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, serving in Cartagena and Arauca before feeling frustrated with negotiations with the Colombian state and leaving the forces, returning to his native city Jundiaí and working as an English language teacher and a help desk assistant. He became once again nationally famous after his second imprisonment during the 2014 protests in Brazil, in São Paulo. In this particular occasion, he was photographed being brutalised by police with a plastic bottle and pepper spray, accused of being part of a black bloc group and arrested for 45 days in the 8th Police Station of São Paulo before being released for