Ukraine spies tried to ensnare alleged Russian war criminals with a fake website, promises of riches and an international sting

Security forces shattered the early morning calm of the lakeside Soviet-era resort outside the Belarusian capital of Minsk, bursting in to arrest 32 Russian mercenaries.

It was less than two weeks before Belarus' presidential election last year, and authorities suspected that the outsiders had been sent from Russia to interfere.
The men were indeed part of a mission. But the target was not Belarus, and they were not under orders from any Russian entity.
They were being set up. The 32, along with one other man detained in southern Belarus, were the target of an elaborate intelligence sting by Ukraine, with the knowledge and alleged support of the United States.

Three former high-ranking Ukrainian military intelligence officials described exclusively to CNN how they orchestrated the extraordinary operation aimed at luring suspected war criminals out of Russia to face prosecution for atrocities committed in eastern Ukraine where separatists backed by Moscow have been fighting for years.
First, the Ukrainian agents posed as a Russian private military company, recruiting for security jobs that paid above the going rate, offering a lucrative $5,000 a month contract to protect Venezuelan oil facilities, CNN was told by the men, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the sensitive operation.
That bait was taken by hundreds of would-be Russian contractors who applied for work, the sources said, giving Ukrainian intelligence an unprecedented opportunity to begin to identify and reel in those suspected of war crimes.
"We started to call them and say, 'Hey, man, OK, tell me something about yourself. Maybe you are not really a fighter, maybe you are a plumber or something like that,'" one of the former military intelligence officers told CNN of the vetting calls to applicants.
"And then they started to reveal things about themselves, sending us documents, military IDs and proof of where they'd fought. And we are, like, 'bingo, we can use that,'" the source added.
In other words, according to the intelligence officers, the targets themselves started to send in evidence of who they were, their military experience and even the particular battles and incidents in which they had been involved, including IDs, and potentially incriminating photos and videos of their exploits in eastern Ukraine and elsewhere.

One video, shared with CNN by the former military intelligence sources, captures a group of rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine holding up the wreckage of a military aircraft that the sources said had just been shot down, a crime designated as terrorism in Ukraine.
Other applicants linked themselves to the attack on MH17, the Malaysian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down in July 2014 over Ukrainian territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. All 298 people aboard the aircraft died. A Dutch-led team of international prosecutors said the plane was downed by a missile brought in from Russia and fired from a village controlled by separatists. Russia has denied any involvement.