The Colonel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Evgheni Malîșko, and Sergeant-Major Roman Timonin were sentenced to 20 and 18 years in a high-security prison, respectively, following a case of torturing and killing soldiers from their own units in the Luhansk region. The information was reported by the publication “Mediazona”.
According to the source, the Military Court of the Southern District in Rostov-on-Don found the two soldiers guilty of several charges: murder of two or more incapacitated persons, committed with particular cruelty by a group of people, in order to cover up another crime (art. 105, para. 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation); torture (art. 286, para. 4); abuse of power with the use of violence, weapons, and causing serious consequences (art. 286, para. 3); desecration of corpses (art. 244). The details of the crime were not presented in court, but the events were reconstructed based on an investigation published by “Suspilne”, which gained access to the criminal case against the commanders of the 6th Motorized Division of the Russian army.
According to the investigation, in the spring of 2023, the unit’s commander, Marat Ospanov, ordered his deputy – 41-year-old Colonel Evgheni Malîșko, with the codename “Voronej” – to execute Russian soldiers “who could not be re-educated”. The reason for the repression was a video recorded by soldiers, in which they complained about the harsh working conditions and stated that they were being sent to certain death, as “cannon fodder”. After this incident, the commander of one of the regiments was replaced, and at Ospanov’s order, the soldiers deemed guilty were taken to cellars in the occupied city of Popasna, in the Luhansk region. There, the soldiers were beaten and tortured. According to the investigation, 19 people were recognized as victims, being forcefully kept in the “cellar”.
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