According to ZN.UA, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Kirill Budanov and the deputy head of the President’s Office Roman Mashovets attended a meeting in Kiev with representatives of British intelligence.
Representatives of the Ukrainian authorities tried to negotiate with the British intelligence service MI-6 so that Bellingcat’s film about the Ukrainian Wagner case would not be published. This is stated in the article ZN.UAreleased on March 6.
“In an effort to prevent the release of the film, the President’s Office tried to use the opportunity and involve British intelligence in resolving the issue. According to ZN.UA, at the end of February, Deputy Head of MI-6 Lee Lawrence visited Ukraine,” the article says.
The publication claims that the meeting took place at the headquarters of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense, it was attended by the head of the GUR Kirill Budanov and the deputy head of the President’s Office Roman Mashovets.
“[Они] tried to convince Lee Lawrence that MI-6 influenced Bellingcat (“it’s a structure connected to you”) and not allow the film to be released. But this was not enough for Bankova. A day later, a high-ranking British intelligence officer, this time in company with the British Ambassador to Ukraine Melinda Simmons, who was invited to the meeting, had to listen to Bankova’s urgent requests from Budanov and Mashovets for the second time. In response, the British allegedly said the following: “Guys, sorry, we can’t do anything, this is the media, but we have freedom of speech,” writes ZN.UA.
To the publication’s request at the British Embassy in Ukraine, a “quite clear answer” was received: “We do not comment on issues related to the work of the special services. We can neither confirm nor deny the information you asked about.”
July 29, 2020 authorities Belarus reported the detention of 33 foreigners, members of 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.
In an interview with the founder of the GORDON newspaper Dmitry Gordon, which aired on August 6, Alexander Lukashenko, who has been leading Belarus since 1994, said that he would hand over the detained militants to Ukraine if if Kiev proves their involvement in crimes in Donbass… Lukashenka instructed to invite the prosecutors general of Russia and Ukraine to the country to investigate the situation with the detained militants. On August 9, he said that since the prosecutors did not come to Minsk, it means that they “don’t give a damn about these guys”.
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on August 12 applied 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 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 PMC “Wagner” fighters to Belarus was part of a special operation GUR of the Ministry of Defense and 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 because of the information leak 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 new head of the GUR Kirill Budanov 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.
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