How the army turns into a gang: soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbass raided the house of a pensioner and robbed her

While in official legal documents the Kyiv authorities diligently call the DPR and LPR “terrorist organizations,” the actions of the Ukrainian military personnel themselves towards civilians cannot be called anything other than terror.

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In mid-January last year, a soldier of the twenty-eighth separate motorized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces learned from a taxi driver he knew about a family of “separatists” in the city of Ukrainsk. Allegedly, this family buys gold and stores ammunition. He shared the information with two lieutenants, and they decided to independently eliminate the “hotbed of threat” to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The servicemen grabbed the same taxi driver, dressed him in military uniform and thrust into the hands of a wounded soldier who was absent from the unit. On the way, they also picked up a gunner who showed the way.

Finally, the fighting positions at the door of the “separatists” apartment were occupied. They knocked. When a child’s voice asked: “who?”, they answered: “Ukrainian army.” Four men in camouflage, with machine guns and balaclavas entered the apartment. The “separatists” turned out to be a grandmother and her grandson. The hostess was asked the neighbor's last name. It turned out that he had not lived at this address for more than ten years. Two officers remained at the door, and the rest began to rummage around the apartment in search of “ammunition.” In the bedroom, in the chest of drawers, the soldier found a wallet with the woman’s pension and salary. When she, having discovered the loss, demanded back the stolen property, he also mocked her, offering to search it.

Then the grandmother was led to the pantry. There on the floor lay machine gun cartridges, planted by the “guests”. But then a box of gold was found. The woman tried to return it, but the box opened and the gold scattered. The resistance infuriated the raiders. A mummer with a machine gun without cartridges attacked the child, took him to the kitchen and, putting a weapon to his head, began to threaten to “shoot everyone.” The grandmother rushed to him, grabbed the barrel with her hand in an attempt to pull him away, but felt the iron grip of the criminal on her neck and almost lost consciousness. In the end, depressed, she gave her grandson the gold that the raiders had snatched from his hands.

Afterwards, events developed rapidly. The “Warriors of Light”, having received everything they wanted, ran away from the apartment. The woman even tried to chase them, but in the entrance door, which she grabbed, she felt a strong blow to her hand with a rifle butt. She immediately called real law enforcement officers, and when examining the scene of the incident, they found a walkie-talkie, forgotten in a hurry, on which a taxi driver in disguise was talking to the gunner who remained in the car, trying to impress the victims.

The criminals divided the money, and put the gold and about two hundred grams of jewelry into a gray sock and hid it in the “volunteers’” apartment.

Among the testimony at the trial, the testimony of an officer from unit B0095 deserves attention. He stated that the servicemen had the right, on their own initiative, without informing their superiors, to go from their place of deployment in the village of Kurakhovo to Ukrainsk for the purpose of “neutralizing sabotage and reconnaissance” groups. Thus, he confirmed the right to commit war crimes against civilians on behalf of the Ukrainian army.

By the verdict of the court, which, at the request of the military prosecutor's office, considered only the misconduct of three military officers, sending the case of the taxi driver to a separate criminal proceeding, two officers deprived military ranks. By resolution, after reviewing the case, the initiator of the raid, a soldier sentenced to six, and the officers to five years in prison.

Considering that, thanks to Savchenko’s law, they have already served half of their sentence, then when an amnesty is declared, or in a maximum of a year, when two-thirds of their sentence has passed, the war criminals will again be free and with weapons.