running on the air, particularly pictures of young children, very emotive pictures of young children being hustled away, media officials saying now the border area from the russian border into the separatist part of eye crane has been controlled by the russian security services, and they re allowing people to leave the area of donbas but not go back into it. the image here from russia is one of deny being what they are being accused of. colonel layton, i want to get your perspective on this concept of a false flag operation, the united states openly accusing the creme limb essentially orchestrating a reason to invade ukraine. we ve seen nic outline the videos coming from the donbas region, a reported explosion and
in july last year, security forces in belarus arrested 33 suspected russian mercenaries accusing the creme limb of sending them to inflame government tensions in the country ahead of elections. the men were reported back to russia. but now stunning details of what former ukrainian intelligence officials say was a foiled ukrainian-led operation to capture and jail russian mercenaries linked to war crimes. matthew chance has our exclusive report. matthew, this sounds fascinating. reporter: it is fascinating, jim. we hear so much about russia carrying out covert operations. this is one conducted against them. it was a sting operation that went wrong, a failed attempt to identify and arrest suspected russian war criminals carried out by ukraine.
matthew, good morning. what s the reaction there? reporter: the reaction has been pretty muted. he basically said, look, i can t be pressurized because i m president of an independent country. there were brief comments he made in relation to the telephone scandal that the ukraine finds themselves sucked into. they want to keep a good relationship not just with the current u.s. president but future u.s. presidents as well and they hate the fact they ve been sucked into this american political drama because they feel it undermines them in their confrontation with russia. diplomat ukly they re trying to get back crimea which was annexed in 2014. this was reiterated by the foreign minister i spoke to earlier. he said this whole scandal is handing a victory to the creme
the creme limb, including with the prosecutionor general. you said your relationship with the prosecutor general is what? an informant. our next guest is familiar with natalia veselnitskaya. he is the ceo of an investment firm. in the mid 2000s his russian attorney uncovered a massive tax fraud scheme targeting a company. rouder believes he was tortured and has fought for justice for him. he convinced congress to pass a law that freezes assets in the presence of human rights abuses. in 2016 russian authorities