The head of the Information Resistance group, Dmytro Tymchuk, has said that special groups formed of 80 residents of Crimea have been trained at the base of the Russian special services in Rostov region.

"All these citizens are members of the so-called Crimean 'self-defense' who were involved in the seizure of state facilities during the annexation of the peninsula in March this year," he wrote on his page on Facebook early on Thursday.

He also noted that subversive groups of the trained fighters were currently being formed and were to be sent to Donetsk and Luhansk regions.