Sources within Ukraine’s National Police told Kyiv Post that its investigators have identified a member of the Chechen “Akhmat” special forces unit, responsible for the 2022 abduction and rape of two minors, during the Russian occupation of the town of Snihurivka in the Mykolaiv region.
The town with a population of around 10,000 is located at a key intersection between the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions for which it became a major target for Russian forces during their early March 2022 offensive.
The police investigation established that the perpetrator broke into an abandoned apartment that previously belonged to a Ukrainian serviceman. He then abducted two underage girls – then aged 13 and 15 – and brought them at gunpoint to the house.
There, he raped and terrorized the girls for three days. When he later discovered that the mother of one of the girls was a Ukrainian military officer held as a prisoner of war, he beat one of the children in retaliation. After three days, the girls managed to escape through a window while their captor was away.
In November 2022, following a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russian troops began to retreat, and the rapist fled with them.
At that stage, police investigators began documenting war crimes in the liberated areas of Ukraine. Among other offenders, they identified the criminal as a 26-year-old native of Russia’s Stavropol Territory, a volunteer who joined “Akhmat” and was trained at the Russian Special Forces University in Chechnya before being deployed to Ukraine.
The suspect was identified with assistance from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (HUR) and was formally declared a suspect in the violation of the laws and customs of war, a charge punishable by up to ten years in prison.
As investigation into his crimes continue, Ukrainian law enforcement continues efforts to identify all individuals involved in crimes committed by Russian forces in the occupied territories.