Alleged pro-Kremlin crime boss killed in Moscow explosion

An explosion in an elite Moscow apartment building killed Ukrainian crime boss and paramilitary group leader Armen Sarkisyan on Monday, The Kyiv Independent reported. Russia’s Investigative Committee on Monday reported an explosion at an apartment on Moscow’s Aviatsionnaya Street.

The explosion killed one person and injured four others, the committee said. The Russian state media outlet TASS on Monday also reported that Sarkisyan died in the hospital after suffering injuries from the explosion. The report cited investigative committee officials, but referred to Sarkisyan as the head of a boxing federation in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. In a separate report, TASS indicated that a second victim had died from the explosion. That victim has not yet been publicly identified.

Who was this man? Sarkisyan reportedly founded a paramilitary group called the Arbat Battalion after operating as a crime boss in the Donetsk Oblast, The Kyiv Independent said. The group, made up largely of ethnic Armenians, operated as an appendage of the Russian Defense Ministry, the Independent reported. The group fought Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region before the Kremlin redeployed it to the Kursk region to repel Ukraine’s incursion into that area last year, the pro-Kremlin news outlet RT reported on Monday.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about how Russian authorities detained a man late last year for planting explosives that killed a Russian general in Moscow.