More than a half a dozen of the 33 alleged Russian mercenaries apprehended in Belarus on July 29 took part in fighting on the Russian side of the ongoing, bloody war in eastern Ukraine.
After a hastily organized national security meeting the same day, the Belarusian national security chief, Andrey Rakou, told reporters that at least 14 alleged members of the Kremlin-linked Vagner private military contractor had either fought or served in some capacity in the Donbas, where a war has raged for six years between Ukrainian forces and combatants supplied by and under the command and control of Russia, killing more than 13,200 people and displacing nearly 1.5 million more.