Fugitive (on child sexual abuse image charges) former US city councillor enlists with Russia for war in Ukraine

A former city councillor and member of the Massachusetts national guard who is wanted in the US on child sexual abuse image charges has fled the country and joined the Russian army fighting in Ukraine.

Wilmer Puello-Mota, 28, former city councillor of Holyoke, Massachusetts, went missing on 7 January, two days before he was scheduled to appear in court in Rhode Island in possession of child sexual abuse images and obstruction of justice charges.

Pro-war bloggers close to the Russian military and state media on Thursday made no mention of Puello-Mota’s fugitive status in the US, instead spinning his defection as a PR coup for Moscow.

“Will served in the US armed forces, but after realising what was really happening in Ukraine, he joined the war as a volunteer a few months ago. Together with the Russian guys, he liberated Avdeevka shoulder to shoulder,” the prominent pro-war blogger Yuri Kotenok wrote on telegram.

Another Russian report said: “[Puello-Mota] is staunchly convinced of the need to support Russia and admires the tenacity and heroism of our soldiers.”

Still alive enough to make propaganda videos.​

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Air Force vet who fled to Russian military says his call sign is ‘Boston’​

Former Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wilmer Puello-Mota was interviewed in a video that the Russian defense ministry released on Telegram.

A former Massachusetts Air Guardsman who fled to the Russian army just as he was charged with soliciting a teenager in the U.S. says his fellow soldiers fighting Ukraine call him ‘Boston.’

“I don’t consider myself a traitor,” Puello-Mota says in the video released by the Russian defense ministry on Telegram. “The United States and Russia are not at war. In the future, I think that the people that caused this in my country should be held responsible for what they’ve done, and we can have some sort of friendship between Russia and the United States.”

WaPo with more details on the backstory.

U.S. veteran who fled child porn charges now flies drones for Russia​

In 2020, he was charged in Rhode Island with possessing child pornography after he reported a gun was stolen from his hotel room. In the subsequent investigation, he told police he was there to meet a woman he earlier believed to be older but was actually 17, according to court documents. Explicit videos and photos of the girl were found on his phone, and she told authorities Puello-Mota knew she was underage when he received the images, the documents said.

The next year, before his charges were publicly known, he ran unopposed and won a seat on the Holyoke City Council in western Massachusetts.

Puello-Mota accumulated several more charges in 2022 after a failed plot to outfox authorities. Seeking a lesser punishment in the child pornography case, Puello-Mota was found to have fabricated a call from his superior officer in the Air National Guard and forged a military memorandum in support of his continued service.

He was removed from the Air National Guard in October 2022, and his security clearance was revoked, officials said.