They murdered Ukrainian civilians, to go in Russia for bars. The punishment was given for saying that

“We came to the five -storey building, we certainly killed forty people in it. These were civilians. Behind us are people in the masks, if you retreat, they will kill you too. They call it 'reset', « Zelerov said in an interview provided by Gulag.net. He forwarded these statements by the criminal panel and the general prosecutor's office in Russia, wrote the server Meduza.

In November 2022, Zelenov and Černavskij got from the penal colony in Siberia by entering the services of the Private Merry Army of Entrepreneur Jevgenij Prigožin. In January, according to the court, they deserted from the training camp and then lived in various places in the Russian occupied part of the Luhansk region in the east of Ukraine. According to the indictment, the interview provided the founder of Gulagu.net Vladimir Osečkin in exchange for help in escape from Russia and the provision of political asylum, as well as for the fee of 50 thousand rubles (about 14 thousand CZK).

« Under the appearance of credible information, they deliberately communicated false information containing claims about the killing of civilians during a special military operation (in Ukraine) in the liberation of municipalities, » the court said in the judgment according to Kommersant.

Moscow since the beginning of the war, which it unleashed three years ago, claims that Russian soldiers have not attack civilians, let alone commit war crimes. Meanwhile, the UN verified and confirmed that at least 12,456 civilians, including 669 children, died in the war. However, these data only capture the confirmed death, the actual number of victims is probably much higher.

Osečkin lives in exile in the west. Prigožin died in August 2023 in the unexplored fall of his private aircraft shortly after his unsuccessful rebellion and dismissed campaign on Moscow.