LPR's Interior Minister, , who Plotnitsky ordered to be dismissed. During the turmoil, armed men in unmarked uniforms took up positions in the center of Luhansk. Some of the men belonged to Wagner, according to the Janes company. In the end, Plotnitsky resigned and LPR Security Minister Leonid Pasechnik was named acting leader "until the next elections." Plotnitsky reportedly fled to Russia and the LPR's People's Council unanimously approved Plotnitsky's resignation. In an interview with the Russian news site The Insider in early December 2017, veteran Russian officer Igor Strelkov confirmed that Wagner PMCs had returned to Luhansk from Syria. Strelkov had a key role in the annexation of Crimea by Russia, as well as in the early stages of the war in the east of Ukraine where he was one of the most senior commanders. He was pulled out of eastern Ukraine in August 2014, reportedly because the Russian authorities felt he was too much of a liability, after which he started opposing the Kremlin. In mid-May 2018, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported that about 100 Wagner PMCs could possibly arrive in Donetsk in the coming days to support the pro-Russian separatist Donetsk People's Republic (DPR). As of October, a few dozen PMCs remained in the Luhansk region, according to the SBU, to kill any people considered "undesirable by Russia". 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Initial deployment The Times reported that the Wagner Group flew in more than 400 contractors from the Central African Republic in mid- to late-January 2022 on a mission to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and members of his government, and thus to prepare the ground for Russia to take control for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on 24 February 2022. The Ukrainian government received information on this early on 26 February, after which it declared a 36-hour "hard" curfew to sweep the capital for "Russian saboteurs". The government said that the previous day its forces had killed 60 saboteurs in Kyiv who were posing as a territorial defence unit. Soon after the government received the information, heavy fighting erupted in western and northeastern Kyiv, with Ukraine claiming to have repelled an attack on a military base. By the morning, Ukrainian forces had secured the capital. The United States described Russian forces that entered Kyiv as "reconnaissance elements". Two days later, a US official stated that there were "some indications" that