Jellyfish

The Russian military killed and raped people in the village of Bogdanovka near Kiev. We know the name of one of the criminals

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THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) IS CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND (OR) A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT

This is the Meduza mailing list, where we talk about the main events related to the war in Ukraine.

Today, Meduza and the journalistic project Astra released an investigation into the crimes committed by the Russian military in Bogdanovka, east of Kiev. This village was under the control of the Russians for about three weeks, and during this time at least three murders and two rapes took place there. Two murders and one rape were committed on the same night - and, apparently, the same Russian military man named in the article took part in them.

The authors of the investigation reconstructed these events by comparing the testimonies of the inhabitants of Bogdanovka, who turned out to be participants and eyewitnesses. We ask you to read this important material in its entirety, and in today's letter we provide a brief retelling of it.

• The occupation of the village of Bogdanovka, 20 kilometers from Kyiv, began on March 8. A column of military equipment (presumably from the 6th or 239th tank regiment from the Chelyabinsk region) passed along the main street and entered the highway to Kyiv, where it was immediately attacked by Ukrainian artillery.
• By the evening of March 8, the Russians began to hide the surviving tanks and armored personnel carriers around the village - and the soldiers were probably instructed to occupy the village, conduct a “cleansing” (that is, find all men with military experience and possible members of the territorial defense) and wait for reinforcements.
• By noon on March 9, a group of military men who were conducting a door-to-door detour reached the easternmost outskirts of Bogdanovka - Zalesskaya Street. There were civilians here. Their testimonies allowed Meduza to reconstruct the crimes of the Russian military.
• Mikhail Romanov was the commander of the unit that made the "detour" in Bogdanovka. He did not hide his face and even asked the locals to find him on social networks: this allowed Meduza’s interlocutors to identify him from photographs. Other circumstantial evidence confirms that this person may be a contract soldier from Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk region), assigned to one of three military units: No. 93992, 89547 or 87441.
• At about ten in the evening on March 9, the military in this part of the village committed the first murder. Locksmith Aleksey Rudenko was shot dead by soldiers because they found khaki trousers on a hanger (actually not military ones, but fishing ones). He died in the arms of his little daughter.
• Around midnight, Romanov and another unidentified soldier in black uniform shot and killed a second local resident, Aleksey Zdorovets, a former deputy from the nearby town of Brovary. The military then repeatedly raped his wife, locking his young son in the boiler room. The woman was miraculously able to escape and subsequently testified. The soldiers buried the body of Zdorovets in the yard, and burned the house. They also killed all the dogs that belonged to the family.
• On March 23, another murder took place in the northern part of the village, hidden behind the forest. Konstantin (not his real name) told Meduza that a Russian soldier broke into his house and shot his father-in-law right in front of him, frightened by a ringing mobile phone. The man's body was found a week later in the same place with a gunshot wound to the head.
• Another rape in Bogdanovka took place on March 28, just a couple of days before the end of the occupation, in the remote Voloshka gardening community. Soldiers broke into Svetlana Perminova's house looking for valuables and then raped her in the basement. Perminova wanted to commit suicide. Her husband, Eduard Shpilevoy, left the village during the occupation to help the Ukrainian military. In mid-April, he was found dead in the basement of a private house in the neighboring village of Shevchenkove with signs of torture. Six more bodies were also found there.
• Presumably on March 30, Russian troops retreated from Bogdanovka. The village was partially mined. Judging by the inscriptions on the walls and other evidence, during the occupation of Bogdanovka, one group of Russian soldiers was replaced by others: they lived in the same houses taken from local residents. Now there are forensics.

Let's repeat it again. You can read the full investigation here .

No war. Your Medusa