Kyiv's Holosiyivsky District Court has extended the effective preventive measure in the form of custody for two Russian special forces officers Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov until April 9.
The court issued the respective ruling at the hearing on Wednesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent said.
The court also decided that the next hearings on the Yerofeyev-Alexandrov case should be slated for Feb. 25 and will begin at 10 a.m.
The court accepted the inquiry of the defense asking to invite a forensic doctor who examined the body of Ukrainian soldier Vadym Puhachov whose murder on May 16, 2015, the two Russian officers are reported to be involved in.
Alexandrov’s lawyer, Yuriy Hrabovsky, said that the doctor needed to be heard as the forensic examination results indicate that a bullet hole in Puhachov’s body did not match a bullet from the Vintorez sniper rifle, the weapon that was used by the accused, according to the prosecutors.
Military prosecutor Ihor Nimchenko said in turn that Yerofeyev and Alexandrov were accused of committing an act of terror as members of a subversive group rather than of the murder of Puhachov. Nimchenko also said that the forensic doctor only described the bullet hole in the victim’s body without concluding what weapon was used to make the hole, as this was not within the doctor’s competence.
Nimchenko also informed that at the Feb. 10 meeting the prosecutors asked the court to consider that answers provided by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office at the Ukrainian side’s request for international legal assistance in this case. According to him, the Russian prosecutors refused to cooperate with the Ukrainian side in providing information whether Yerofeyev and Alexandrov were Russian regular servicemen. At the same time, Nimchenko said, the defense has documents issued by the Russian side stating that the defendants were not in active military service at the moment of their detention in Ukrainian territory.
Yerofeyev and Alexandrov were detained near the town of Schastia in Luhansk region on May 16, 2015, when they were trying to seize a strategic bridge. Both men were injured. They were operated on at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Clinical Hospital in Kyiv on May 29.
On May 19, 2015, Ukrainian investigators informed the two Russian officers that they were suspected of committing crimes under Article 258-3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (terrorism).
Later, Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district court ruled that they should be remanded in custody.
