The article examines non-statutory paramilitary or armed groups operating under the control of the Russian Federation in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the features of operational and investigative characteristics of criminal offenses committed by them.
 With the help of dialectical, sociological and statistical methods, the prerequisites for the emergence of paramilitary and armed formations not provided for by law, the motive and goals of their creation, the methods and circumstances of the commission of a criminal offense, the objects of the trace pattern are determined.
 According to the results of the study, it was found that the aforementioned criminal groups are almost entirely composed of local residents, who, due to the difficult socio-economic situation, under the influence of propaganda, join criminal formations and become an instrument of the hybrid war of the Russian Federation, which thus masks the military invasion of Ukraine.
 The defining feature of the characteristics of the studied formations operating in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is the purpose of their creation - destabilization of the situation in Ukraine to change the Euro-Atlantic course, absorption by the Russian Federation and destruction of Ukraine as an independent state.
 Using the method of modeling, proposals were made to the Criminal Code of Ukraine in terms of additional qualification for participation in paramilitary and armed formations operating under the control of the Russian Federation, which are not provided for by law, as well as the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, in order to modernize the conduct of interrogation.