KYIV. Oct 9 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian security services have established a private military company called Wagner involved in the conflicts in Donbas, since 2014, and subsequently in Syria, Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said.
"I want to report... that evidence has been gathered of Russian military operating in Donbas and in Syria... of the Wagner group's operations... The head of the company is Dmytry Utkin," Hrytsak said at a briefing in Kyiv on Saturday.
It has been established that the Wagner group numbers 1,578 members, he said.
The group was first sighted in action on May 21, 2014, he said. The geography of its operations covers the breakaway parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Syria. In Syria, there were 1,350 Wagner members (near Latakia and Homs), Hrytsak said.
The SBU knows of 277 Wagner group members who fought both in Donbas and Syria, 67 of them were killed, he said.
In particular, the SBU established that the Wagner group was involved in the downing of an Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft in Donbas, the storming of the Luhansk airport, and the events in Debaltseve (Donetsk region), the SBU chief said.
"What the Wagner group was doing....the downing of the Il-76 with our paratroopers on board; the storming of the Luhansk airport... the storming of Debaltseve," Hrytsak said.
The first two operations involved 72 Wagner militants, 15 of them were killed, he said. "We know each one of them by name," Hrytsak said. "Some 205 Wagner militants took part in the storming of Debaltseve, losses: 51 people, we know everyone," he said.
Another 36 fighters from this group were killed on the dividing line in Donbas, the security chief said.
Ukraine considers the Wagner group to be fighters of the Russian Federation armed forces, Hrytsak said. "On December 28, 2016, Russia passed legal changes allowing to recruit non-servicemen for military counterterrorism missions outside of Russia. Such individuals are regarded as those in active military service... thus, starting from December 28, 2016 we consider members of the Wagner private military company to be servicemen of the Russian Federation armed forces," Hrytsak said.
"This project allows Russian politicians to confidently say that they are not there or that 'we did not send them there'," he said.
The group receives secret funding from the Russian national budget, and in 2017 the funding was increased by 185 million rubles, he said. As for its ethnic composition, the SBU has identified about 40 fighters as Ukrainians and 95% of the members as Russian citizens, Hrytsak said.
At the same time, Russia keeps denying that some of Wagner members were Russian citizens after reports of them emerged, he said.
The SBU has issued a notice of suspicion to Wagner chief Utkin, he said. "Our investigators have issued a notice of suspicion for Utkin... We will hand it over to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office on Monday, we hope the Office will support us," Hrytsak said.
He did not say what the charges are against Utkin. "Let us first endorse the suspicion before we give any further information," Hrytsak said, noting the voluminous text of the document.
The SBU passes data regarding the group on to security agencies in Europe and other countries, given that this "private army" might be used "to destabilize the situation in any part of the world," Hrytsak said.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Information Policy will jointly hold a special briefing in Brussels on October 19 regarding the "Wagner campaign," the Ukrainian security chief said.