Ukrainian soldier Maksym Ovcharenko has been jailed for 22 years by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk “people’s republic” after being found guilty of the cruel treatment of civilians, waging illegal warfare, and murder, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement on Monday.
According to prosecutors, Ovcharenko was one of two Ukrainian soldiers who detained an “unarmed civilian” in the city of Mariupol on 5 April 2022.
A Ukrainian commander then reportedly ordered Ovcharenko and two other servicemen to shoot the civilian. The three men, who had been “acting as an organised group, fueled by political and ideological hatred towards the victim”, according to investigators, obeyed the order and shot the civilian several times, killing him on the spot.
In May, the same court sentenced an Azov Regiment fighter to life in prison for killing a Russian serviceman.
