Armen Sarkisian, suspected organiser of anti-Maidan provocateurs, visits Berdiansk

The occupied city of Berdiansk has been visited by Armen Sarkisian, a crime lord from the time of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych who is suspected of having organised the "titushky" [hired thugs used to intimidate Maidan protesters in 2014 – ed.]. Sarkisian, nicknamed "Horlivskyi", has been wanted since 2014.

Source: video report by the occupiers

Details: In the video, which appeared a few days ago, Russian propagandists present Armen Sarkisian as the honorary president of the Berdiansk Boxing Federation, who had come to meet local boxers and brought them equipment.

"Boxing is a very courageous sport. Keep training. This is not my last visit, it's just the beginning," Sarkisian says in the video.

However, according to Ukrainian intelligence, Sarkisian is not merely touring Ukrainian cities recently captured by the Russian Federation. He has been appointed as the new "warden" of prisons throughout the territory of the Russian Federation and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The objective is to set up a new private military company to put an end to the monopoly of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner militia in Russia.

"It is expected that within a limited time, the new structure will draft a significant number of ‘recruits’. The inspiration for the project has to be the infamous Wagner Group," Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence noted, adding that the new project should "strengthen the occupation contingent and create internal competition among Russian private military companies".

According to Defence Intelligence, the new structure is being sponsored by the Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, owner of the Gazprom-related company Tashir Holding, which also includes the company Electric Networks of Armenia. He is considered to be one of the sponsors of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Background: A native of now-occupied Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast, 44-year-old Armen Sarkisian has been wanted since 2014 on suspicion of organising the Maidan titushky [provocateurs who would incite violence at pro-European, anti-Yanukovych political rallies in order to get protestors arrested. Yanukovych was the former Russian-backed president of Ukraine who committed multiple crimes against the Ukrainian people and corrupted the country – ed.]. According to the investigation, on 17 February 2014, acting in the interests of former Interior Minister Vitalii Zakharchenko and his business partners, Sarkisian ordered Yurii Krysin to find 200-300 people to "protect public order" in the government quarter, which led to the murder of journalist Viacheslav Veremii.

Krysin says he later received US$20,000 from Armen Sarkisian "for protecting the government quarter". Krysin paid his accomplices UAH 1,000 each and kept the rest for himself. A Ukrainian court sentenced Krysin to five years in prison. He later received a second sentence for organising the torture of Maidan activists at the behest of Oleksii Chebotariov, a Yanukovych-era businessman now in hiding in Russia. Krysin will be imprisoned until 2026.

In the summer of 2019, Yurii Krysin tried to change his testimony and remove the mention of Armen Sarkisian from it, emphasising that he had allegedly slandered him because of a financial conflict. This happened on the eve of the cassation appeal hearing.

During the Yanukovych era, Sarkisian was an influential crime boss nicknamed "Armen Horlivskyi" [Armen from Horlivka – ed.] who was close to Yurii Ivaniushchenko, nicknamed Yura Yenakiievskyi [Yura from Yenakiieve], a former member of parliament for the Party of Regions [Yanukovych’s party – ed.]. Ivaniushchenko was removed from the wanted list in 2019 further to a ruling by the prosecutor's office to close the proceedings. Sarkisian is also considered to be the shadow overseer of all business in occupied Horlivka. He owns cafés and has established boxing clubs there. According to Defence Intelligence, since 24 February, he has been looting and taking over businesses in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

In 2018, Ukrainian law enforcement officials announced that Sarkisian had been detained in France, but later reported that it was the wrong person. The detention story was denied by the suspect himself, who noted that he was in Russia.

The media have also published a photograph of Armen Sarkisian with Adam Delimkhanov, the right-hand man of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and a member of the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament – ed.].

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