Russian marine commander convicted for killing civilians in Kherson region

The court found the commander of a marine unit of the Russian Black Sea Fleet guilty of high treason and violation of the laws and customs of war, which resulted in the death of civilians. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment with confiscation of property.

This was reported by the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office.

According to the investigation, after the occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the convict sided with the enemy, received Russian citizenship and began serving in the Armed Forces of the aggressor state, where he later took a command position.

From March to October 2022, he was in the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson district - in the settlements of Pravdyne and Myrolyubivka, as well as on the line of contact with the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the administrative border with Mykolaiv region. During this period, he not only commanded the hostilities, but also directly participated in the commission of war crimes against the civilian population.

It is about the systematic suppression of local resistance: conducting so-called "filtration measures", intimidation, coercion to cooperate with the occupation authorities, as well as facilitating the creation of illegal governing bodies under the control of the military and special services of the Russian Federation.

A separate episode in the proof of guilt is the events of April 2022 in the village of Pravdyne. Then the Russian military under his command detained three employees of a local enterprise. They were taken to a private house, where three of their colleagues and a 15-year-old girl were already being held.

In a confined space, with no chance of rescue, the occupants used physical violence. As a result, seven civilians were killed. To conceal the crime, the Russian military blew up the house with the bodies of the victims.

According to the head of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office, Serhiy Hrytsenko, after the de-occupation of the settlement in November 2022, prosecutors, along with police investigators and experts, exhumed the bodies and conducted a detailed examination of the crime scene. The victims had gunshot wounds to the head and their hands were tied. The examinations unequivocally confirmed the violent nature of the deaths.

"The testimonies of local residents completed the picture of the crime: the occupiers did not allow the dead to be buried for a long time. An exception was made only for the child, who was buried the next day," he added.

According to Hrytsenko, this crime is another demonstration of the enemy's disregard for human life and dignity.

After killing people, the convict took the phone of one of the victims, replaced the SIM card and called his wife in Russia.

"For him, it was a normal day of service. Such behavior is indicative - it emphasizes the sense of complete impunity with which the Russian military acted in the occupied territory. That is why the principle of inevitability of punishment in such cases is of fundamental importance," he said.

Олеся Ланцман