A destroyed residential building in Lysychansk, Luhansk Region, Ukraine, July 3, 2022.
Kyiv – A court in Ukraine sent two prisoners to prison for nine and ten years, respectively Russian soldiers for shelling residential areas in the east of the country. This was reported today by the Ukrainian secret service SBU.
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The SBU did not release the names of those convicted, nor did they say whether they confessed to the crime or when they were sentenced. Both fought in eastern Ukraine, where they were captured last year. “During the investigation, indisputable evidence was gathered of the guilt of two more fighters who joined the occupation troops of the aggressor country at the beginning of the full-scale invasion,” the SBU said in a statement. According to her, both soldiers “actively participated in the conquest of Ukrainian cities on the eastern front”. One of them started fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine as early as 2014 and fought in the ranks of the Russian army in the Bakhmut region last year. The other commanded the Russian troops that shelled Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine. He was captured along with a number of his subordinates. According to the court, they violated the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine and participated in the activities of paramilitary or armed formations whose existence is not regulated by law.
Moscow denies that Russian troops deliberately target civilian targets, although residential areas and other civilian infrastructure repeatedly become the target of their strikes during the year-long invasion. Many cities in Ukraine are damaged, some of them are completely destroyed.
