Commander of ArBat, Unit Formed by Horlivka Crime Boss, Eliminated

Aik Gasparyan, commander of the ArBat battalion with the call sign Abrek, was killed in the war against Ukraine.

His elimination was reported by the so-called mayor of occupied Horlivka in Donetsk Oblast, Ivan Prikhodko, who announced Gasparyan’s death during the “execution of a combat mission.”

Aik Gasparyan was a native of Nagorno-Karabakh and a former fighter for the Wagner Group. He took part in the battles near Soledar and Bakhmut.

For his participation in combat operations, Gasparyan received the Medal for Courage, which was personally presented to him by Vladimir Putin.

Gasparyan was recruited for the war against Ukraine from a maximum security prison, where he was serving a sentence of seven years and three months for armed robbery.

The ArBat battalion was created in 2022 by a crime boss from Donetsk Oblast, Armen Sarkisyan, known as “Gorlovsky,” who was involved in forming and training the unit.

In 2023, Aik Gasparyan took over as head of ArBat. The unit was part of the international brigade Pyatnashka and was used by Russian forces as an assault unit.

In February 2025, the founder of the battalion, Armen Sarkisyan, was killed in Moscow as a result of an explosion in the elite residential complex Alye Parusa (Crimson Sails).

In September 2024, the Investigative Committee of Armenia stated that Arbat was recruiting citizens of the country to prepare a coup d’état in Yerevan, and the battalion itself subsequently announced the recruitment of “volunteers” from Indonesia.

Recall that recently, the commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, stated that Ukraine eliminated one and a half times more invaders in January than Russia was able to recruit.