Bellingcat journalist Hristo Grozev had this impression while working on the investigation, he himself spoke about this during the Mezhyhirya Festival on September 5. Conference broadcast was conducted в Facebook.
Grozev said the Ukrainian authorities have not responded to inquiries from Bellingcat reporters in this case for six months.
“We have not received answers from them. But we have hope, we are still waiting. […] I’ll be frank. It seems to me that the threat of the release of this film made the government do something positive. They have done some very daring things to prove that they are not the “bad guys”. Let’s give them three more months, let them do something else good during this time, “he said.
According to him, the investigators have enough data, confirming the fact of the special operation, but did not find an answer to the question of why it was canceled.
Context:
July 29, 2020 Belarusian authorities reported the detention of 33 foreignersin a private military company. The Security Council of Belarus announced that a criminal case was opened against the detainees on the article on the preparation of terrorist attacks, later it was reported that they were suspected of preparing riots.
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 12 appealed to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Belarus with requests for the extradition of 28 Wagnerians (nine of them are citizens of Ukraine), who actively participated in hostilities in the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions as part of the terrorist organizations “LPR” and “DPR”.
On August 14, it became known that the Belarusian authorities extradited the detained Wagnerites of Russia… President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky considered it an unfriendly step from Belarus. In his opinion, the consequences of the release of the mercenaries “will be tragic.”
The editor-in-chief of “Censor.NET” Yuri Butusov said on August 18 that the trip of the Wagner PMC fighters to Belarus was part of a special operation Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the SBU: it was supposed to land a plane with mercenaries in Ukraine, and then detain them. According to Butusov, the special operation failed because of the decision of the head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak and Zelensky, to postpone the departure of the militants from Minsk from July 25 to 30, as well as due to information leakage from Ukraine.
That information about the conduct of a special operation to detain the Wagnerites came to the Russian and Belarusian special services after meeting with Zelensky, which was attended, in addition to the heads of the Ukrainian special services, the heads of the President’s Office, said the ex-secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov. He, like the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko, noted that the special operation has been conducted since 2019.
Former head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Bogdan said that the operation to capture the mercenaries of PMC “Wagner” was ripped off by a man “from the very closest circle” of Zelensky.
In the SBU called this data “fantastic scenario”… The head of the GUR said that the soldiers of the Wagner PMC in Minsk transferred by Russian special services and it was not a special operation by the SBU.
Zelensky said that no “drain” of the special operation to detain There were no Wagnerians.
Ermak called a disinformation campaign version about the involvement of the SBU in the appearance of the Wagnerites in Minsk.
On February 27, 2021, Butusov reported that evicted from the house and deprived of the protection of the ex-head of the GUR Vasily Burbu, who, according to the journalist, testified about the failure of the operation to capture the Wagnerites. The police denied the information.
Bellingcat’s Wagnerian Investigation Release transferred several times. On March 6, ZN.UA reported that Office of the President of Ukraine tried to negotiate with MI6 about the failure of the investigation. According to journalists, the head of the GUR Kirill Budanov and the deputy head of the President’s Office Roman Mashovets were present at a meeting in Kiev with representatives of British intelligence.
Roman Dobrokhotov, editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of The Insider, who helped Bellingcat to investigate the mercenaries of the Wagner PMC, said in early August that the release of the investigation was being delayed as journalists want the material to include the position of the President of Ukraine and his office.
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