According to the publication, in the case file on the website of the Southern District Military Court, proceedings were terminated only with respect to Alexey Smirnov: he signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense and went to war. Two other servicemen did not leave, and one of them is charged only with one count of abuse of office; Kommersant does not name them.
Along with Ospanov, the case initially involved Alexey Smirnov, Stanislav Ivanisov, Gennady Muriy, Alexander Pilyay, Alexander Podosenov, Andrey Uvarov, and Yevgeny Chukanov. On one count of abuse of office, charges were brought against Pilyay, Podosenov, Smirnov, and Uvarov.
As Kommersant writes, the Southern District Military Court has been hearing this case since May 2025. The criminal case was opened over the murder of at least seven subordinates of the 6th Motor Rifle Division.
In spring 2023, servicemen from a regiment of this division recorded a video complaining about poor service conditions and about being turned into “cannon fodder”. According to the investigation, after that Ospanov, with the call sign Gyurza, ordered the soldiers to be punished, and 19 people were sent to basements in occupied Popasna in the Luhansk region.
Documents reviewed by the Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne show that Ivanisov was responsible for the unlawful detention of the servicemen, while investigators considered Yevgeny Malyshko responsible for the murder of the servicemen who were deemed “beyond rehabilitation”. On the morning of July 4, seven servicemen were taken out of the basement, put into a UAZ Patriot, and driven to the village of Bakhmutske in the Donetsk region, where, according to the investigation, Yevgeny Chukanov was driving the vehicle, and in another car were Colonel Malyshko, Senior Sergeant Roman Timonin, and Warrant Officer Gennady Muriy. There, the seven were taken into the basement of an empty house and bombed with grenades; the survivors were finished off with a pistol, and the bodies of the dead were burned along with the vehicle. In March 2025, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Malyshko to 20 years in a maximum-security penal colony, and Timonin to 18 years in prison; both were stripped of their military rank and state awards.
