Armen Sargsyan was killed in Moscow. What else is known about this businessman?

On the morning of February 3, an explosion occurred in the "Alie Parusa" residential complex in Moscow, killing Armen Sarkissian, a businessman and criminal authority from the occupied city of Horlivka in the Donetsk region.

According to the investigation, the murder was caused by the redistribution of Sarkissian's business sphere of influence, but a "Ukrainian trace" is not excluded: during the Euromaidan events, he hired mercenaries to disperse opposition supporters, and after the events of 2014, he spent his life between the self-proclaimed "DPR" and Russia, and in 2022 he founded the volunteer battalion "Arbat", which supported a large-scale war and soon became part of the Russian army. According to Ukrainian intelligence, this formation, due to Sarkissian's loyalty, was seen by the Russian government as an alternative to Yevgeny Prigozhin's private military company "Wagner".

"Meduza" told the story of Armen Sarkissian's path from a member of an organized criminal group in a remote region to the rank of field commander with a large sphere of influence in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Sarkissian was a member of a large organized crime group in Donbass, which helped him join President Yanukovych's circle

Armen Sarkissian was born in Armenia in 1978, but as a child his family moved to the city of Horlivka, an industrial city in the Donetsk region, famous in the Soviet era for the Styrol chemical plant and a factory that produced drilling equipment for mines. "I consider Donbass my second homeland," Sarkissian said.

Sarkissian had already joined the criminal groups in Horlivka in the 1990s, when he began to engage in underground business. By the 2000s, he had risen to the level of an authority with connections in criminal circles. According to Ukrainian media, Sarkisyan led a criminal gang that worked for Oleksandr Baturin (Batur), one of the "Yenakievites", and later became a trusted representative of the "Yenakievites" leader Yuri Ivanyushchenko (Yura Enakiev). Enakiev appointed him as a "supervisor" - and Sarkisyan became known as Armen Gorlovsky.

The "Yenakievites" were considered one of the most serious groups in Horlivka. They controlled the alcohol and taxi business, influenced the coal and metallurgical industries in the city, and, according to rumors, organized the smuggling of drugs across the Russian-Ukrainian border in cooperation with Russian criminal groups. According to the Donetsk newspaper "Vchasno", Sarkisyan's work consisted mainly of "criminal activity, intimidation of people, businessmen, and so on."

After Viktor Yanukovych came to power in 2010, Sarkissian established contacts with the leadership of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry through Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a friend of the new president. In addition, Ivanyushchenko entrusted Sarkissian with control over the coal business in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In particular, the Donetsk enterprise "Artemugol", although officially state-owned, was in fact managed by Ivanyushchenko and Sarkissian. In 2013, the publication "Gorlovka.ua" called Sarkissian a local "gray cardinal" with many connections in the city's elite, leading a luxurious lifestyle and engaging in patronage (the journalists did not specify which areas they patronized).

The editor-in-chief of "Gorlovka.ua" Oleksandr Bilinsky describes that period as the years of uncontrolled rule of the "controllers" in Donbass. “Ivanyushchenko’s people controlled the city, and it didn’t matter what the mayor, prosecutor, or police chief’s last name was. He [Sarkissian] would go to the police chief and give instructions,” the journalist recalls.

At the same time, Sarkissian was officially listed as an assistant to the head of the local Boxing Federation and people’s deputy — the same Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, who in 2012 entered the Verkhovna Rada on the Party of Regions list and a year earlier took second place in the list of the most influential Ukrainians according to the Korrespondent edition.

Euromaidan allows Sarkissian to further strengthen his position among the Donbas separatists

During Euromaidan, the government entrusted Sarkissian with hiring “titushki” — mercenaries to violently suppress the protests in Kiev. According to the investigation, it was the people hired by Sarkissian who killed Vyacheslav Veremiy, a journalist for the Vesti newspaper, in the capital. In the spring of 2014, after the Ukrainian opposition won, Sarkissian's fighters took part in rallies against Euromaidan supporters in Donbas. In May of that year, the new Ukrainian government declared Sarkissian a wanted man - from that time on, he began to live in the areas of Donbas not controlled by Kiev and in Russia.

In the self-proclaimed DPR, Sarkissian quickly found common ground with the head of the Russian-influenced administration of Horlivka, Ivan Prikhodko, and retained influence over the city's shadow economy. In addition, he continued to maintain contact with Ivanyushchenko, who was wanted and had fled Ukraine (according to Ukrainskaya Pravda, in Monaco), in particular, helping him participate in the redistribution of his property in Odessa and looking after his property in the DPR (Ivanyushchenko himself could not find common ground with the new leadership of the "republic", for which he was "sanctioned" by them).

Sarkissian also remained in his post as head of the DPR boxing federation, and in 2020 he was declared an honorary citizen of Horlivka. At this time, Armen Gorlovsky was also actively involved in business in Russia: according to RBC, he was a co-founder of the Moscow-based companies Retail Group (renting and management of private or leased real estate) and Tclub (wholesale of tobacco products), and also owned a 99.64% stake in the investment company AB Group.

In 2022, Sarkissian will become an influential field commander in the Russian-Ukrainian war — and could compete with Yevgeny Prigozhin

After the start of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sarkissian openly supported Russian aggression. In September 2022, he created the Arbat battalion ("Armenian battalion") from volunteers, which began operating in the Donetsk region within the ranks of the Russian army.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, in November of that year, the Russian government instructed Sarkissian to recruit prisoners from prisons in the occupied territories of Russia and Ukraine for the war - according to the Ukrainian intelligence service, the goal was to create a force loyal to the Kremlin, which would compete with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, who is expanding his influence. Ukrainian intelligence did not provide any details about Sarkissian's activities.

Sarkissian's activities are highly valued in Moscow: in July 2023, the Arbat battalion was officially incorporated into the structures of the Russian Ministry of Defense, and its fighters are blessed by the bishop of the Armenian Church of Moscow. At that time, former criminal Aik Gasparyan will become the new commander of the Arbat - he was sentenced to eight years for armed robbery, but was released early after joining the Wagner Group, and in December 2022, Vladimir Putin awarded him the Medal for Courage.

In the fall of 2024, the battalion will be transferred to the Kursk region, which is partially occupied by the Ukrainian armed forces. At the same time, the Investigative Committee of Armenia reported that militants are preparing to overthrow Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan, who has begun to move away from Moscow, at the Arbat military base in Rostov-on-Don.

^{Fighters of the Arbat battalion shelter a howitzer in a forest in the Kursk region. November 5, 2024
Sergey Bobilev / RIA Novosti / Sputnik / Profimedia}
Sarkisyan himself was practically not seen in the military operation zone - he spent most of his time in Moscow, where he was engaged in business. In February 2024, Sarkisyan's name appeared in the criminal chronicle: his bodyguards provoked a shootout with Chechen MMA fighter Rasul Ochaev - the athlete's car collided with the car of Sarkisyan's daughter Emilia.

At that time, rumors spread that Sarkisyan had come into conflict with the Chechen elite - although in May 2022 he was photographed with Adam Delimkhanov, and in October 2024 he congratulated Ramzan Kadyrov's brother Visita on his birthday. However, even if there was a misunderstanding between Sargsyan and the Chechens, the conflict would be resolved in favor of the Donbass businessman: Rasul Ochaev was convicted of intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

A year after that shooting, on the morning of February 3, an explosion occurred in the Aliye Parusa residential complex, where Armen Sargsyan lived. At that time, he was leaving the elevator with two companions who also had ties to Ukraine in the past - Sergei Shkryabatovsky, a former bodyguard of Yanukovych, and Oleg Kasperovich, a former officer of the Crimean special forces who defected to Russia in 2014 and worked as Sargsyan's bodyguard. Shkryabatovsky, Kasperovich, as well as one of the residents of the building, Darya Karseladze, who was in the entrance hall at the time of the explosion, were seriously injured. Sargsyan died in the intensive care unit.

The Investigative Committee has opened a case under the article "Murder and Attempted Murder of Two or More Persons" (Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the investigation, the explosion was probably carried out by a suicide bomber born in Armenia. According to the main version put forward by the Investigative Committee, the motive for the murder could be the struggle for territorial spheres of influence related to Sargsyan's business.

However, investigators are not ruling out a "Ukrainian trace." Last December, the Security Service of Ukraine charged Sarkisyan with two criminal articles - "voluntary participation in illegal armed formations" and "aiding an aggressor state." If this version is confirmed, the case will be reclassified to another article, the SBU said in a statement. Follow “Zamin” news on “Telegram”