19 August 2020, Wednesday, 17:43 118

SSU Denies Information About Participation Of Service In Operation To Detain Militants Of Wagner PMC

Редактор: Daria Zubkova

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) denies information about the participation of the service in the operation to detain the militants of the Wagner private military company (PMC), some of whom fought in Donbas.

The SSU press service has said this in a statement, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The SSU emphasizes that it does not comment on rumors, does not support the enemy's media and information operations, and does not participate in public discussion of various fantastic scenarios.

“However, as an exception, we note that the data on the participation of the SSU in the so-called Wagnerian special operation is an ordinary fake. And its primary source, we emphasize, more than a week ago was precisely the Russian publication,” the statement reads.

The SSU also claims that not a single employee took part in the conversations between the militants and the recruiter, which were allegedly recorded on audio recordings, so titling one of the participants in the conversations as an "SSU officer" is speculation and deliberate manipulation.

“We understand that the initiators of such information “stuffing” act according to the logic “a lie repeated several times may seem true to someone.” Therefore, we urge the Ukrainian media and individual leaders of public opinion in the pursuit of sensations to be more careful about information hygiene and not spread rumors in favor of unfriendly countries," the statement says.

According to media reports, the Ukrainian special services were preparing a large-scale operation to detain a group of Wagner PMC militants, for which they lured them to Belarus.

However, after the law enforcement officers reported these plans to the Presidential Office, the special operation failed.

As Ukrainian News Agency reported, Belarus earlier handed over to Russia 32 detained militants of the Wagner PMC.

Ukraine expected from Belarus a more balanced and legally correct decision on the militants detained near Minsk, some of whom fought in Donbas.