You're reading: SBU blocks accounts with Hr 50 million intended to recruit mercenaries in eastern Ukraine

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has confiscated over Hr 22 million in cash and blocked 25 accounts with Hr 50 million intended to recruit mercenaries and pay for their actions against Ukrainian soldiers and peaceful citizens.

“SBU has disclosed schemes of financial flows to recruit mercenaries and give them money for killing Ukrainian soldiers and peaceful citizens. The Ukrainian special services have confiscated over Hr 22 million in cash and blocked 25 accounts with Hr 50 million,” the SBU press center said, giving information on the objects at an exhibition that opened at the National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War (of 1941-1945) in Kyiv on July 11. The government says the exhibition exhibits are evidence of Russian involvement in supporting mercenaries in eastern Ukraine.

“SBU investigators started a pre-trial investigation under criminal proceedings regarding 16 Russian citizens involved in the actions of Russian special services, 72 Ukrainian citizens suspected in offences against the constitutional order and territorial integrity of Ukraine, high treason and sabotage. A total of 160 Ukrainian citizens are suspected in terrorism, mass riots and smuggling weapons. The majority of them, and it’s already been proved, acted according to orders from Russian special services,” the press center quoted Head of SBU Investigative Department Vasyl Vovk.

SBU exhibition presents “implicit evidence that Russia is financing mercenary terrorists, recruiting and preparing militants at their military bases and carrying out blatant informational aggression on the Internet.”

“Detailed confessions of apprehended mercenaries and saboteurs of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of Russian Federation, passports and military IDs of Russian citizens, separatist leaflets – all these constitute physical evidence confiscated from persons named in criminals proceedings opened by the SBU under Article 109 (actions aimed at violent change or elimination of constitutional order or at seizing power in the state), Article 110 (offences against the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine), Article 111 (high treason), Article 113 (sabotage), Article 114 (spying), Article 258-258-5 (terrorist act, creation of terrorist organization, funding of terrorism) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine,” reads the statement.

The exhibition also includes “weapons and military equipment that was taken in battles against armed gangs in the east – some of those items are used only by the Russian Federation. “