Newsman: A pro-Russian paramilitary leader from eastern Ukraine was killed by a bomb blast through the lobby of a luxury Moscow apartment block, Russian media reported Monday. Armen Sargasyan has long been accused by Ukraine of aiding Russia’s war effort in the country’s eastern Donetsk region,
Armen Sargasyan died in hospital after he was critically injured, Russia’s Kommersant said. One of his security guards died and three more people were injured in the explosion, the newspaper reported, citing Moscow’s health department.
“The assassination attempt on Sarkisyan was carefully planned and was ordered. Investigators are currently identifying those who ordered the crime,” state news agency TASS quoted a law enforcement official as saying.
Major damage to front of the building, with shattered glass and debris strewn across the lobby, could be seen in a video posted to Telegram by the Investigative Committee of Moscow.
Without naming the victims, the committee said in a statement that two people died, one of them in medical facility. Three more were injured, it added.
Ivan Prikhodko, the Russia-installed mayor of the town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine where Sarkisyan grew up later, said in a post on Telegram that “as a result of a terrorist attack committed in the Alyie Parusa residential complex, Armen Nagapetovich Sargasyan passed away.”
Sargasyan was described by Kommersant as the founder of the “Arbat” unit, a special volunteer force that included veterans of the Wagner mercenary group. The unit is an abbreviated version of the term “Armenian battalion” after the country of Sargasyan’s birth, according to Russian news outlet RBC.
The bomb detonated as a man with bodyguards entered the lobby of the complex — the name of which translates to “Scarlet Sails” — which lies on the banks of the Moskva River just 7 miles from the Kremlin, according to several Russian media reports.
In December, the SBU claimed responsibility for killing the head of Russia‘s chemical, radiological and biological weapons unit, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who was killed by an explosive device planted in a scooter next to a Moscow apartment building
