The founder of a pro-Russian militia group in eastern Ukraine, described by authorities in Kyiv as a \u201ccriminal mastermind\u201d, has died following a bombing in central Moscow, according to Russian state media. <\/p>\n
Armen Sarkisyan died Monday at a Moscow hospital from injuries sustained in an explosion in an upmarket residential complex in the capital city, TASS quoted the medical services as saying. The Russian Investigative Committee later confirmed Sarkisyan\u2019s death, stating that \u201cdespite the assistance provided, one of the victims died in a medical facility.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sarkisyan, also known by nickname \u201cArmen Gorlovsky\u201d after Horlivka (Gorlovka in Russian) the eastern Ukrainian town he is from, founded the separatist Arbat Battalion fighting in the region. Ukraine\u2019s Defense Intelligence described him as a \u201cwell-known criminal mastermind\u201d who became the \u201csupervisor\u201d of prisons across Russia and occupied territories of Ukraine in November 2022. <\/p>\n
The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence said the founding of Arbat in 2022 was an attempt to counterbalance the influence of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Russian private military company sector. Prigozhin was killed the following year when his plane crashed two months after his attempted mutiny against Russia\u2019s leadership. <\/p>\n
The battalion fought in several key battles of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) previously said. Arbat was composed \u201calmost entirely\u201d of former Wagner personnel, the US-based conflict monitor said in October 2023. <\/p>\n
Sarkisyan was an ally of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-leaning leader who was ousted following deadly protests in Ukraine in 2014 and fled to Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities. Sarkisyan was wanted in Ukraine for his alleged role in the violent response to those demonstrations against Yanukovych. <\/p>\n
Sarkisyan was leaving the exclusive Aliye Parusa residential complex in northwest Moscow on Monday morning when the explosion happened, a local resident said in a video published by the independent Russian media outlet SOTA. <\/p>\n
Asked about the incident during a press briefing on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: \u201cThe special services are doing their job. It is difficult work. The information is being clarified, and work is ongoing, so it is impossible for us to comment on anything at this time.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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The founder of a pro-Russian militia group in eastern Ukraine, described by authorities in Kyiv as a \u201ccriminal mastermind\u201d, has died following a bombing in central Moscow, according to Russian state media. Armen Sarkisyan died Monday at a Moscow hospital from injuries sustained in an explosion in an upmarket residential complex in the capital city, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}