Ukrainian procuracy announces suspicion to Russian military who executed 3 brothers in Chernihiv region

This was reported by the Office of the Prosecutor General and the National Police of Ukraine.

According to the investigation, on 18 March 2022, during the occupation of one of the settlements of Chernihiv region, a group of armed Russian military broke into the house of the locals and searched it.

When the invaders found one man’s Ukrainian army uniform, they beat the him and his brothers with rifle butts and threatened to shoot them. They tied the men up, put bags and handcuffs on their heads, put them in an armoured personnel carrier and took them to the territory of a local farm, where they were imprisoned in one of the premises for four days.

The men were kept in a small room without proper conditions with their hands and eyes tied. The invaders constantly beat the brothers and forced them to confirm their participation in the destruction of enemy equipment. 

On the evening of March 21, during the interrogation of one of the brothers, the Russian invader forced the family's elder brother to confess to burning Russian military equipment, although he had nothing to do with it.

After that, the commander of the Russian military group, Colonel Konstantin Smirnov, already identified by the police as the head of the district military police, ordered one of his subordinates, Denis Podgorny, and others to shoot all three brothers.

On the same day, Russian soldiers took the civilian men in the trunk of a car to a forested area, made them kneel in front of a dug hole and shot them. They then threw the bodies into the pit and buried them. However, one of the brothers, Mykola, managed to survive and get out of the grave on his own.

The commander of the unit and the Russian military are charged with violation of the laws and customs of war by prior conspiracy by a group of persons, combined with premeditated murder.

Note: According to Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is presumed innocent of committing a crime and cannot be criminally punished until his or her guilt is proved in accordance with the law and established by a court verdict.

• The day before, a Russian military officer who tortured a local resident of the occupied village of Lukashivka, Chernihiv region, in order to "knock out" information about the Armed Forces of Ukraine, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.