‘Silenced’: HUR Eliminates High-Ranking Traitor Who Tortured Ukrainian POWs

Ukrainian intelligence has eliminated Mykhailo Hrytsay, a high-ranking collaborator and war criminal in the Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk, Zaporizhzhia region.

“The traitor and war criminal Mykhailo Hrytsay was eliminated in occupied Berdyansk,” Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) reported on Telegram.

Sources within the intelligence agency told Kyiv Post that Hrytsay was shot on Wednesday, June 18, in a special HUR operation. According to the source, he was killed with a Makarov PM pistol equipped with a “silencer” – more accurately a suppressor.

Hrytsay, originally from Ukraine’s Poltava region, was active in Ukraine’s public and political life before defecting to the Russian occupation administration.

He had repeatedly run for parliament, served as an assistant to a people’s deputy, and recently headed the Berdyansk city organization of the Socialist Ukraine party.

As the so-called “deputy mayor for infrastructure, housing and utilities, and the fuel and energy complex” in the Russian-installed administration, Hrytsay was responsible for organizing repression against residents and establishing torture chambers used against Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs).

He was also involved in the appropriation of municipal and state property in Berdyansk.

On April 1, 2022, Hrytsay was officially charged in absentia with high treason under Part 2 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

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Russia Strikes Humanitarian Rescue Boats and Zaporizhzhia Café

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“We still have plenty of such enemy accomplices in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. We will come for each of them and stop their criminal activities - with a silencer or without, quietly or loudly, but always effectively,” the HUR source told Kyiv Post.

As reported by Kyiv Post earlier, Zaur Gurtsiev, a Russian major who ordered the 2022 bombing of Mariupol that killed thousands, was killed on May 29 in a grenade explosion in Stavropol.

Russian media said that Gurtsiev and another man were drinking on a bench when a grenade detonated nearby. The regional governor confirmed the explosion and said all possible scenarios, including a “Ukrainian terrorist attack” were being considered.

The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel later reported that Gurtsiev had connected with a man, Nikita Penkov, via a gay dating app. After several canceled meetings, they agreed to meet on the night of the explosion.

Reports suggest the grenade was hidden in Penkov’s bag, possibly planted as part of an intelligence operation to collect compromising material on Gurtsiev.