Bellingcat and The Insider: they wanted to land a plane with Wagnerians under the threat of an explosion to the list of foreign agents) published an investigation of Ukraine's preparation of a special operation to detain fighters of the Wagner private military company (PMC) who fought in the Donbass.
The material claims that Operation Avenue was prepared by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (GUR). The Wagnerites were hired via the Internet, ostensibly to guard Rosneft facilities in the Middle East on behalf of the real PMC MAR, which had by that time ceased its activities. The operation involved a former GRU officer who had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence in Donbass a few years earlier.
Bellingcat and The Insider write that applicants, in their resumes, described combat experience in Donbass in detail. For example, Lieutenant Colonel Oleksandr Krivenko told how in 2014 the military registration and enlistment office in Astrakhan asked him to form a battalion to be sent to the east of Ukraine. By the end of May 2020, the GUR managed to form a “private army” of 180 people. In June, the Wagnerites were informed that the “project curator” who had hired them had been killed in Syria, but they were soon offered to guard facilities in Venezuela.
According to Bellingcat and The Insider, the plane with the Wagnerites was planned to land in Ukraine under threat explosion on board. The special operation was scheduled for June 26, 2020. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was first briefed about her on June 15. He approved the project and asked for a detailed plan, which was approved by the Minister of Defense on July 1. From that moment, the director of the GUR Vasily Burba and the deputy director of the SBU Ruslan Baranetsky regularly informed Zelensky about what was happening.
On July 29, 2020, 33 Russians were detained in Belarus on charges of preparing riots before the presidential elections. Some of them had Ukrainian passports. Kiev requested their extradition, but the Wagnerites returned to Russia. Later, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian website Censor.net, Yuri Butusov, said that they wanted to lure out the Wagnerites and use them to exchange prisoners with Moscow, but the operation fell through because of Zelensky. Zelensky himself called it nonsense.