Marta Gichko17:37, 07.07.24

Journalists learned how much the statistics of serious crimes committed by occupiers in Ukraine have grown.

The number of brutal crimes committed by Russians in the occupied territories of Ukraine against their own comrades has increased rapidly. In 2023 alone, 190 cases reached the courts, although the real number of incidents is likely much higher.

According to the Novaya Gazeta Evropa article , on the night of October 17, 2022, a Russian soldier named Artem Terekhov decided to desert from his unit in the occupied Luhansk region. He took a rifle and hitchhiked away. A beige minibus stopped to give Artem a ride. The driver was a Russian officer who was returning home to his wife.

Artem got into the passenger seat and the car drove on. The driver eventually turned off the main road, stopped the car and tried to open the door. Fearing that he would be caught, Artem jumped out of the car and fired his weapon at the officer through the passenger door.

Artem pulled the officer’s body out of the minibus and drove away. He drove 5 kilometers through several more villages, then stopped the car and walked on. In the forest near the village of Rodakovo, Artem came across a Russian troop deployment point. He tried to shoot the soldiers there, but realized that he had emptied his entire 25-round magazine when he killed the officer. Artem was detained and sentenced to eight and a half years in a maximum-security penal colony in June 2023. According to the case file, he was drunk at the time.

This is just one of dozens or potentially hundreds of killings committed by Russian soldiers in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Rising murder rates

Analyzing court data, the publication calculated that from January to October 2023, at least 135 Russian servicemen were tried in Russian-occupied Ukraine – more than the total number of murders committed by veterans in all regions of Russia combined. This is a minimum estimate, since garrison courts in the partially occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions do not publish case materials online.

Other violent crimes the soldiers were charged with included manslaughter, weapons violations and assault.

Manslaughter cases are often covered up, with the charges reduced to “violations of firearms regulations” – a lesser criminal offence. In 2023, the number of such cases in the occupied territories increased to 32, i.e. almost tenfold.

The publication previously investigated how Russian veterans continue to commit violence after returning home, and found that judges often give them light sentences and fines, while ordinary Russians are sent to prison for similar crimes.

Quarrels in the trenches

In April 2022, occupier Ruslan Vysotsky had a falling out with a fellow soldier. During the argument, Ruslan’s comrade shot him in the leg. The soldiers were separated, but their commander brought them back together to resolve the conflict. During the conversation, Ruslan pulled out a pistol and fatally shot his fellow soldier in the head after the latter accused him of homosexuality. Vysotsky offered to dispose of the body himself or falsely report his death during the fighting. However, the commanders turned him over to the military police.

Soldiers are rarely punished for drunkenness unless they commit a serious crime. As in civilian life, battlefield killings often arise from personal conflicts and disputes, as in the Vysotsky case, but the potential for violence is greatly increased by the fact that everyone involved is armed. On the front lines, it is easy to write off killings as combat casualties, so it is impossible to know exactly how many of these killings occurred.

Alcohol was involved in 83% of the murders analyzed by the publication. It is reported that 76% of the defendants were intoxicated, which is higher than the Russian average (67%).

“To what extent is a person suffering from PTSD responsible for his actions? He should be treated, not judged. Perhaps forcibly. But in Russia, no one cares. Especially in the occupied territories,” said lawyer Sergei Golubok.

Forensic experts have identified some defendants as alcoholics, drug addicts, and people suffering from mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Only 10 percent of cases are referred to experts. However, service members diagnosed with mental illnesses are usually mentally healthy to stand trial, often on charges of aggravated assault and murder.

Of course, personal conflicts do not always end in murder. Soldiers often try to frighten or teach their comrades a lesson by aiming at their arms and legs, or stabbing them.

In January 2023, a drunk Russian officer Vladimir Polyakov, who served in the occupied Luhansk region, called one of his subordinates to his dugout by radio. The day before, while talking to a woman in a cafe, the soldier revealed confidential information about the goals and deployment of his battalion. Upon his return, Polyakov decided to punish him for his carelessness by shooting him in the leg. As the soldier fell, Polyakov hit him twice on the head with the handle of his pistol, for which he received a suspended sentence of three years and three months for abuse of power.

Of the available cases heard in the Russian-occupied territories, at least 27 involved aggravated assaults, excluding beatings resulting in death, more than were heard in Russian military courts in 2022.

In total, 36 cases involve allegations of “violent acts against a commander” and “abuse of authority,” both of which are used to cover up fights and injuries.

Civilian casualties

One late evening, a military truck stopped near a store in a village near Starobilsk in the Luhansk region. The soldiers left the truck to buy drinks. Allegedly, one of the civilians standing near the store began insulting the Russians.

One of the soldiers “decided to scare” a civilian by pointing a rifle at him from the back of a truck. When the truck started moving, Efremov accidentally pulled the trigger and shot the civilian in the chest, killing him.

On July 4, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case into the murder of a civilian who, along with two adults and a child, was traveling through the occupied Kherson region to Crimea.

“They were stopped by drunk Russian soldiers and brutally beaten,” the prosecutor’s office reported.

The exact number of civilians killed by Russian soldiers in the occupied territories is difficult to estimate, as Russian media rarely report on such stories and there is little forensic data. The few reports available in Russian media that do cover such stories do not directly concern the killing of civilians, but rather talk about “Ukrainian agents” who “planned sabotage” or “passed information to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

“Reporting on killings by Russian soldiers in occupied Ukraine would contradict the official narrative that local residents are being killed only by Ukrainian ‘Nazis,'” the publication notes.

Even though Russian authorities consider civilians in occupied Ukraine to be Russian citizens, regardless of whether they have actually applied for the status, because crimes against local residents are often actually crimes against Ukrainian citizens, they should be recognized as war crimes, says lawyer Kazhe Holubok. Therefore, such cases should be heard by the International Criminal Court.

(C)UNIAN 2024