As a result of the trip of the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) Alexander Bastrykin to the DPR, it was decided to place a division of the committee there, which will investigate, among other things, possible crimes committed by Ukrainian servicemen against civilians. At the same time, the investigation plans to focus not only on the executors, but also on the commanders who gave orders. Ukrainian generals have already been identified and put on the wanted list, who ordered to bombard Donetsk with Tochka U missile systems. It should be noted that the Donetsk investigation charged the same persons with committing crimes for which life imprisonment is provided.
For security reasons, since Donetsk is shelled almost daily, the trip to the region of the leadership of the TFR was carried out in secrecy: the press service of the committee reported about the next day’s event.
During the meeting in Donetsk, Oleksandr Bastrykin was informed that military investigators in the Donbass managed to identify most of the commanders of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (APU) who gave orders for artillery shelling of peaceful settlements. Among them, for example, were the authors of the strike on Donetsk with the Tochka U tactical complex, a missile with cluster charges.
It was established that at 11.30 on March 14, the servicemen of the 19th missile brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, following the order of the commander of the joint forces operation, Lieutenant General Alexander Pavlyuk, as well as the direct orders of the commander of the missile forces and artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Vyacheslav Gorbylev and the commander of the brigade, Colonel Fyodor Yaroshevich, released a rocket in the Voroshilovsky district of the capital of the DPR. As a result, 17 civilians died on the spot, three died from their injuries in hospitals, and 36 received injuries of varying severity.
The defendants in the criminal case were charged in absentia with the commission of a crime under Art. 356 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Use of prohibited means and methods of warfare”), they are put on the wanted list. Note that the investigative department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the DPR is also looking for them. Moreover, two generals and a colonel in Donetsk are accused under paragraph “b” of Part 3 of Art. 229 (“Terrorist act that caused the deliberate infliction of death on a person”) and Part 2 of Art. 423 (“Waging a war of aggression”). Terrorism is punishable by life imprisonment, while Art. 356 and Art. 423 defendants face only twenty-year sentences.
Alexander Bastrykin instructed to document all the shelling, separately ordering to establish which other units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine possess “Points U” and used them, and to give their actions a legal assessment.
At the meeting, it was noted that the investigation also has data on the involvement of the commanders of the Azov national battalion, Sergei Velichko and Konstantin Nemichev, in the torture and murder of at least eight Russian servicemen who were captured in the Kharkov region. The leaders of the fan group of FC Metalist are accused in absentia of committing a crime under Art. 317 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (encroachment on the life of military personnel). The investigation is being conducted by military investigators who arrived in Donetsk. According to the plan of the committee’s leadership, they want to place them in the region on a permanent basis, so that work can be carried out closer to the scene of incidents. The criminal case on crimes in the east of Ukraine is being processed by investigators of the Main Investigation Department of the TFR in Moscow.
Teimuraz Khizanishvili from the “Georgian Battalion” and a resident of Kiev, Alexei Antonyuk, were also put on the wanted list on suspicion of torture and massacres of captured servicemen. According to the TFR, investigators have at their disposal a list of almost 600 citizens of 47 countries who came to fight for Ukraine. Kommersant’s sources say that most of them are from Georgia, Great Britain, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Azerbaijan and Israel. There are even Australian citizens who are classified as mercenaries in the TFR.
The head of the ICR noted that in addition to them, it is first of all necessary to hold the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine accountable, since it is the commanders who give criminal orders. Criminal cases, he noted, in the future can be used in an international tribunal as evidence of the involvement of the Ukrainian authorities in crimes. The creation of the latter, however, is still being discussed.