You're reading: SBU: Captured Russian special ops troops had mission to ready armed takeover of Schastya

Two captured Russian special operations officers were part of a 16-person unit on a mission to prepare the armed seizure of Schastya, a town in Luhansk Oblast, the State Security Service, or SBU, said today.


The Luhansk Power Plant, capable of feeding electricity to 98 percent of the region, is located
north of Schastya.

Based on
information gleaned from two Russian military intelligence officers who were
captured on May 16 in the area, their autonomous group of 16 soldiers has been
conducting reconnaissance and hit-and-run missions since March, SBU
counterintelligence chief Vitaliy Naida said at a briefing in Kyiv. They were
to carry out missions until June.

Russia’s
leadership has repeatedly denied sending actively serving Russian soldiers into
Ukraine.

On the day of
their capture, a firefight erupted near the Luhansk Power Plant between Ukrainian forces and up to 15 Russian military intelligence special
operations soldiers. One GRU officer was killed, and three officers were
wounded in addition to the two captives. A Ukrainian junior sergeant was killed
and three were wounded.

Fourteen of the special
forces group currently operating near Schastya have been identified, Naida said, adding
that the SBU has already identified 60 Russian soldiers with ranks as high as
major that have fought in Donbas from this particular unit.

The 16-person group’s captured leader, Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev,
allegedly told the SBU that it had also “staged ambushes on roads used by
civilians,” the Ukrainian counterintelligence chief said.

Headquartered in the city of Luhansk while in Ukraine,
the men are well trained and have combat experience, including in the two
Chechen wars and Afghanistan in 2004. They had also planted mines deep in
Ukraine-held territory, according to the SBU which posted pictures of them with
global positioning system devices on its Twitter feed.

They are saboteurs, whose task is killing Ukrainian military servicemen and
civilians,” Naida said.

During the capture of Yerofeyev
and Sgt. Alexandr Alexandrov, Naida said that the Russians
started firing on their own positions to prevent them from being taken alive. As a result, Anton Kazakevych, a sergeant in the self-proclaimed Luhansk
separatist unit, was killed.

Meanwhile one
Ukrainian soldier was killed and eight wounded in the last 24 hours, the military
said at a May 21 afternoon briefing in Kyiv. Combined Russian-separatist forces
attacked Ukrainian positions with artillery, mortar and gunfire along the
entire
450-kilometer (280-mile) front line, Kyiv authorities
announced this morning at a separate briefing.

The SBU said it shot down near Avdiivka a Russian Forepost drone, worth $6 million, one of only 11 in Russia’s arsenal.