An international group of Bellingcat investigators explained the delay in publishing the investigation into the detention in July 2020 near Minsk of a group of more than 30 Russians involved in the so-called “Wagner’s private military company”, reports Radio Liberty.
“Our investigation of Wagnergate should be made public today, we are doing the final editing. I am not announcing the exact time as we will inevitably miss it, but we will publish the investigation as soon as it is ready. And I repeat, this is a very long text version, not a Netflix movie or TV series, as some Ukrainian media seem to have reported. We do not have an agreement with Netflix despite previous reports, ”tweeted the founder of the Bellingcat investigative team. Eliot Higgins.
On September 8, the American television channel CNN released a conversation with three anonymous “former Ukrainian military intelligence officials” who described how they worked on preparations for an operation to capture members of the Russian private military company Wagner.
President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky, commenting on the message about the disrupted operation, said that “the idea of such an operation was the idea of, let’s say, other countries, definitely not Ukraine.”
On July 29, 2020, 33 Russian citizens were detained in a sanatorium near Minsk. The Belarusian authorities said they suspected them of preparing riots on the eve of the elections, and Alexander Lukashenko Then he called the detention of the Russians from the “Wagner PVC” “an extraordinary event” and announced the “dirty intentions” of Russia.
Ukraine asked to hand over the detained militants to her, because they took part in hostilities in the Donbass and fought against the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, no charges were officially brought against them, and two weeks later 32 of the 33 detainees were returned to Russia. One more remained in Belarus, because he also has citizenship of this country. On August 14, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia announced that the earlier detainees were on the territory of Russia.
–
– .
