Motorized rifle regiment officers are suspected of beating their subordinates

The military investigation department for the Novosibirsk garrison completed the investigation and sent a criminal case to court against the platoon commanders of the motorized rifle regiment, lieutenants Andrei Zubov and Roman Alafyev, accused of beating conscripts. Moreover, the victims did not report assault on the part of the officers, and the investigation into this case began with an appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation by representatives of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, who saw a video with a scene of beating of servicemen on the Internet.

The Novosibirsk Military Court received the case of the platoon commanders of the motorized rifle regiment (military unit No. 91060), lieutenants 24-year-old Andrei Zubov and 25-year-old Roman Alafyev. Recent graduates of the Far Eastern Combined Arms Military School have been charged with abuse of office with the use of violence (Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

As Vasily Ushakov, senior investigator of the military investigation department for the Novosibirsk garrison, said, in December 2007, junior sergeants Anatoly Shipitsyn and Sergei Rukhlyadko, who took up night duty, left the unit without permission to buy cigarettes. And when the conscripts returned, their commanders, lieutenants Zubov and Alafyev, decided to deal with the violators of discipline. According to the case materials, officers Zubov and Alafyev beat their subordinates with their hands, feet and a mop. The incident was captured on the cell phone camera of one of the officers. Junior sergeants Shipitsyn and Rukhlyadko did not file a complaint about the beating with their superiors or the prosecutor’s office; they were soon demobilized.

A criminal case into the beating of servicemen was opened in October 2009 after checking the statement of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, which was received by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation. The public organization was outraged by a video with a scene of beating junior sergeants that appeared on the Internet. The six-minute video was preceded by the credits “First Blood. No comments”, the soundtrack to the movie “Mortal Kombat” was used, slow motion effects. As investigator Ushakov said, a video with the comment “This is how we were raised” was posted on his page on the social network “Vkontakte” by a former colleague of sergeants Shipitsyn and Rukhlyadko, who lives in the Leningrad region. He explained to law enforcement officials that he copied the video from the computer’s hard drive and then posted it on his account.

The officers were charged. They were not detained. Lieutenant Alafyev, as investigators said, fully admitted his guilt. Andrei Zubov, who in December 2008 was convicted of beating other subordinates, was fined 30 thousand rubles. (they decided not to dismiss him from the armed forces), he denied everything. The officer explained to the prosecutors that in the recording they were fooling around; he did not strike his subordinates, but only imitated them. However, his testimony is refuted by the results of the examination, which was entrusted to specialists from the Novosibirsk FSB department. As stated in the act, “analysis of the dynamics of the movements of the persons participating in the video filming indicates the real nature of the events taking place and the absence of elements of stage production.”

Kommersant will report the verdict.

Konstantin Voronov, Novosibirsk

The investigation produced a video