Moscow, Russia – Russian occupational authorities in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday sentenced four more captive Ukrainian soldiers to long sentences for alleged violence against civilians during the battle for Mariupol last year.
The city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea fell to Russian forces after being virtually razed to the ground in a month-long siege last spring, and has since been occupied by the Russian army.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were taken prisoner after Moscow seized the city.
Some were sent to Russia, while others were put on trial in occupied areas of eastern Ukraine.
Moscow’s Investigative Committee said three soldiers of a Ukrainian tank battalion — Alexei Koval, Andrei Chumak and Valery Federovich — were sentenced to 26 years in prison.
They were found guilty in the occupied Donetsk region of “rough” treatment of the civilian population in Mariupol.
The committee said the men had “opened fire” on an administrative building in “March-April 2022”, also accusing them of “attempted murder” and property damage.
Russia also said a Ukrainian army sniper, Igor Kleshchunov, was handed life in prison, found guilty of “shooting four peaceful civilians” fatally.
The Investigative Committee said he had shot “three unarmed men who were close to combat positions” and another man who “was not participating in the armed conflict” in March 2022.
Russia has in recent months sentenced an increasing number of captive Ukrainian soldiers.
Tuesday’s sentences come less than a week after Moscow’s forces handed 26 years to two other Ukrainian captive soldiers.
Rights groups and Western countries have criticised Moscow for holding trials against captured Ukrainian soldiers, which have taken place in occupied Ukrainian territory or Russia itself.
