The professional MMA fighter decorated by Putin, who became the commander of the Arbat paramilitary battalion deployed in Donetsk, was killed in a “combat mission”

The commander of an ethnic Armenian paramilitary unit fighting on Russia's side in the war against Ukraine has been killed in the fighting, the Kremlin-appointed mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Horlivka announced Monday, according to independent Russian publication The Moscow Times.

Hayk Gasparyan, who commanded the 2023 Arbat Battalion, died Monday morning while on a “combat mission,” Mayor Ivan Prikhodko wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

The mayor did not specify where Gasparyan was killed and did not provide other details.

Born in Karabakh, a disputed territory in the South Caucasus, Gasparyan was 34 years old at the time of his death, although there is no definite information on this.

The Arbat Battalion, which fights as a non-regimented military unit alongside the Russian armed forces, consists of approximately 500 people, most of whom are ethnic Armenians. The battalion is part of the international volunteer brigade Pyatnashka, which is based in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which is largely occupied by Russian forces.

In 2023, President Vladimir Putin awarded Gasparyan the “For Courage” medal while he was still a member of the Wagner paramilitary troupe.

Just three years earlier, a Moscow court had sentenced him to seven years in a maximum security penitentiary after being found guilty of armed robbery. Russian media reported that the Wagner group recruited Gasparyan in August 2022 while he was serving a prison sentence in the Ryazan region.

Prior to his criminal conviction and military career, Gasparyan was a professional MMA fighter and trainer.

The Arbat Battalion was founded in September 2022 by businessman Armen Sakisyan, who died in a suicide bombing in a Moscow apartment building in February 2025. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities listed Sakisyan as a suspect in an investigation into Russia's recruitment of imprisoned fighters.