The driver-loader and the gunner were found guilty of “violation of the laws and customs of war”.
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Two Russian soldiers were sentenced to eleven and a half years in prison by a Ukrainian court on Tuesday May 31. They were prosecuted for having bombed two villages in the Kharkiv region, in the north-east of the country, multiple missile launcher. According to the prosecution, the two defendants “fully admitted their guilt”.
Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov were found guilty of “violation of the laws and customs of war”, following a trial which began in mid-May near the town of Poltava, 140 kilometers from Kharkiv, according to the Interfax-Ukraine agency. She clarified that the two defendants had “fully admitted their guilt and said they repented”.
The two soldiers, a driver-loader and a gunner, were accused of having fired on the very first day of the Russian attack, Thursday February 24, using “Grad” multiple missile launchers from the Belgorod region in Russia. Their shot had reached “critical infrastructure and residential buildings” villages in Kozatchia Lopan and a school in Veterynarné, in the Kharkiv region.
According to the prosecution, they then crossed the Ukrainian border and continued the shelling. After the destruction of their military column, the two soldiers were captured by the Ukrainian army.
Ukrainian justice had already condemned Monday, May 23, a 21-year-old Russian non-commissioned officer, Vadim Chichimarine, to life imprisonment for the murder of a civilian. He was the first Russian soldier to be tried for a war crime since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.