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September 18, 11:28 pm
Andriy Ermak (Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine)
The head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, again denied the existence of a special operation of the Ukrainian special services to arrest the militants of the PMC Wagner.
On the air of the Freedom of Speech program, he stated that «detective story about a special operation – “invented from scratch”, and its authors allegedly took various real events and added fiction to them.
«From the beginning of the war, the intelligence and relevant authorities of Ukraine began to document all the people who participated in the war against Ukraine and who killed our soldiers. This has continued and continues to this day. And it was the facts of this documentation that were leaked to the media, ”he said about the allegedly leaked conversations with the Wagnerists.
Yermak stressed that the disclosure of this information has greatly complicated the work of Ukraine’s special services. According to the head of the President’s Office, the arrest «Wagnerians ”was indeed a special operation, but not Ukraine. He stated that it is necessary to create a Center for the Fight Against Propaganda to prevent «spread forgeries “:
«We know that the so-called private armies work closely with the special services of the Russian Federation. Do you think it is possible that a group of such people prepared for a year and no one from the special services of the Russian Federation knew about it and let it happen, and then they appeared in Belarus? … “
On July 29, Belarusian security forces announced the arrest of 33 militants from an unofficial private military company controlled by the Kremlin. (PMC) Wagner.
On August 2, the prosecution chose a preventive measure in the form of arrest. The Belarusian Security Council reported that they were supposedly looking for another 200 militants in the country.
The Belarusian authorities stated that the objective of the PMC fighters was to destabilize the situation in the country before the presidential elections. Some of the detainees fought in the Donbas on the side «DNR “and” LPR. “Contrary to Ukraine’s extradition request, Minsk handed over the mercenaries to Moscow.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Belarus’ decision to transfer members of Wagner’s PMCs to Russia as unfair and inconsistent with friendly relations between states.
Later, journalist Yuri Butusov said that the “Wagnerists” were recruited by the SBU. According to him, the intelligence agents tried to attract «Wagnerians ”- previously participated in hostilities in Donbass and were involved, in particular, in the destruction of the Il-76 aircraft in June 2014, as a result of the accident in which 49 Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Due to the intervention of the OP, the militants were detained near Minsk by the Belarusian security forces and finally handed over to the authorities of the Russian Federation.
Journalist Yanina Sokolova published an audio recording that allegedly recorded the negotiations between the mercenaries and the SBU operative that recruited them.
In Bankova, the operation is denied, claiming that it is «rumors. “On September 9, the court ordered the SBU to investigate the possible betrayal of the head of the OP, Andrei Yermak, in connection with the” drain of the special operation “against the” Wagnerites. “
