Fingers were severed and teeth were filed down: near Snihurivka, occupiers executed a patriot.

Fingers were severed and teeth were filed down: occupiers killed a patriot near Snihurivka

Investigators from the National Police have completed a pre-trial investigation into three Russian soldiers who brutally murdered a Ukrainian patriot in the Mykolaiv region for passing information to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

This was reported by the Main Investigation Department of the National Police of Ukraine.

While under occupation in the Snihurivka district of the Mykolaiv region, a 53-year-old local resident recorded the number, direction, and dates of Russian military movements and relayed this information to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For this, the occupiers first beat and tortured him: they bound his hands with plastic ties and filed his teeth down, then severed his fingers and shot him. This information was gathered during the scene investigation, witness interrogations, investigative experiments, and hundreds of other investigative actions reported by witnesses to the crime.

Police learned of this murder while processing information about war crimes in Mykolaiv. Among the evidence of the atrocities committed by the Russians was an intercepted conversation between Russian soldiers, which indicated the torture and murder of a civilian. Without any information about the victims or witnesses at that time, the investigators conducted meticulous work and identified three captors who tortured and killed the civilian man.

To identify the suspects and victims, police checked facts of civilian killings in the de-occupied territories of Mykolaiv and Kherson regions and contacted all heads of local villages and territorial communities. After interviewing them, they discovered an incident that occurred in late March 2022 in one of the settlements in the Snihurivka district of the Mykolaiv region. After establishing the burial site of the deceased, police conducted an exhumation for a forensic examination and comparative genetic molecular testing with the relatives of the deceased.

The specialists from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine aided in identifying the murderers. With all the necessary information, investigators from the National Police established and proved the involvement of three Russian servicemen in the torture and murder of the civilian, namely the commanders and a soldier of the 108th Airborne Assault Regiment from Krasnodar Krai, who were stationed in the Snihurivka district of the Mykolaiv region at the time of the crime.

In May 2024, under the procedural guidance of the Office of the Prosecutor General, investigators from the National Police notified Russian soldiers of suspicion for the murder and torture of a civilian in the Mykolaiv region, combined with the intentional killing (part 2 of article 438 of the Criminal Code).

The pre-trial investigation is now complete, and the indictment has been sent to court for substantive consideration. The suspects face life imprisonment.