1/ Armenian-Russian paramilitary and crime boss Armen Sarkisyan was reportedly assassinated in a Moscow apartment block by a suicide bomber using a Soviet copy of the US M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel mine. It's unclear who the man was or what his motive might have been. ⬇️
2/ More details have emerged of the death on 3 February of Sarkisyan, a gangster who founded the ARBAT (Armenian Battalion) mercenary group which is fighting in Ukraine.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1886333345971269656
3/ Sarkisyan was fatally wounded in an explosion in which one person died on the spot. The person who was killed is thought to have been holding a MON-50 anti-personnel mine, a copy of the US Claymore mine, which he detonated as Sarkisyan and his bodyguard entered the building. 
4/ Not surprisingly, the man's injuries were so extensive that he has not yet been identified. He reportedly has a tattoo on his left shin in the shape of a sword.
5/ Sarkisyan's bodyguard Oleg Kasperovich, a former special forces colonel who survived the bombing, has given details. He says that Sarkisyan believed he was under constant threat and used a variety of protective measures, including a portable signal jammer.
6/ The suspected bomber was seen several times at the building's elevator or sitting on a couch in a lobby, carrying a flat briefcase with him. At the time of the explosion, he was sitting on the couch and reading a newspaper. Kasperovich believes he spoke Armenian.
7/ Kasperovich identifies the explosive device as a MON-50 from fragments found at the scene and in his own clothing. It nearly missed Sarkisyan, with most of the blast hitting the ceiling and leaving a long strip with shrapnel grouges.
8/ It's speculated that the bomber was leaning back at the time of the explosion, holding the device vertically rather than horizontally, thus greatly narrowing the width of the kill zone and inadvertently directing the blast upwards rather than across the lobby.
9/ The bodyguards were at the edges of the kill zone and escaped serious injury, but Sarkisyan is said to have stopped momentarily to greet Kaspirovich. The bomb was detonated at this moment.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1886336518685434122
10/ It's unclear who was behind the bombing, but given the apparent method used, it's possible that it could have been some kind of personal feud or revenge attack. While some have speculated Ukraine was responsible, suicide bombings haven't been attributed to it before. /end
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