MOSCOW, January 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian authorities have detained 14 suspected members of a Ukrainian organized criminal group that is thought responsible for more than 50 contract murders, an Interior Ministry official said Monday.

Police Colonel Yury Karasev told journalists that the Russian ministry had received information from its Ukrainian counterparts that the suspects, wanted for murders in Ukraine in 1991-2002, were in Moscow. A joint operation had resulted in the detention of all suspects, Karasev said, including the group's leader, whom he named as 34-year-old Gerontiy Lepsai.