In cold blood: Defense Ministry says Ukrainian soldier murdered by Russians in Crimea was unarmed, fleeing

Meanwhile, an officer accompanying the gunshot victim is missing after witnesses said Russian military soldiers beat him and carried him away.

Oleksandr
Razmazin, the deputy chief of the principal command center of the armed forces
of Ukraine, says that Stanislav Karachevsky, the slain Ukrainian officer, was
returning home after military service with his friend, Captain Artem
Yermolenko, the beaten companion who remains missing.

On their
way home, the two Ukrainians had to pass the checkpoint of their military unit,
which is controlled by Russians now. The Russians behaved aggressively and, to
avoid escalating the tense situation, Karachevsky and Yermolenko ran to their
dormitory trying to find a hideaway there.

The Russian
soldiers followed them.

Mykhaylo
Horbatyuk, a senior pilot of the Saki naval aviation brigade, says that a group
of armed Russian soldiers broke into the dormitory.

“The Russians
ran up into the dormitory and started the gunfire,” Horbatyuk said.
“They should not have been there. Little children might have come out in the
corridor and been shot.”

Yermolenko
managed to hide in a room. But Karachevsky was less lucky and got shot by Yevheniy
Zaytsev, a Russian naval infantry soldier.

An official
statement of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine says that one bullet struck his
chest and another went through is eye. The body was found on the fifth floor of
the dorm, but Ukraine’s Defense Ministry suspects that the body was moved there
after the killing. “Traces of blood lead from the third floor,” the ministry
explained.

The Russian
Investigative Committee in Crimea launched criminal investigation into the
murder but has its own version of the events that led to Ukrainian soldier’s
death.

Andrey
Vasylkov, a committee’s representative, believes that Karachevsky provoked the
conflict. “These are the drunken Ukrainian soldiers who provoked a conflict
with the Russian military men who had to defend themselves,” Vasylkov said.

Ukraine
doubts that the investigation conducted by the Russians will be fair.

“All the
statements of Russian invaders say that the murdered officer of the Ukrainian
Military Forces Major Stanislav Karachevsky was allegedly drunk are cynical and
overt lies. These statements are made in order to shield the murderer. We have
the reasons to consider that the so-called investigation will be preconceived,”
reads the statement of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

Dmytro
Tymchuk, a director of the Center for Political and Military Studies, is
skeptical about the Russian
investigation, too.

“Russians insist that drunken unarmed Karachevsky attacked
the armed Russian soldiers but do not specify why the Russian squads pursued
the officer to the dorm and killed him there,” Tymchuk told the Kyiv Post. “It
is clear that the murderer will be completely acquitted.”

Ukrainian
soldiers are being constantly abused by Russian military men so the murder took
place in the context of the overall Russian pressure on Ukrainian troops in the
Crimea, Tymchuk believes. “This officer did not want to tolerate humiliation
that’s why they killed him,” he said.

The Ukrainian
Defense Ministry told the Kyiv Post that it is not aware of Yermolenko’s
whereabouts.

Karachevsky
and Yermolenko are not the only Crimean victims. On March 18, during the storm
of photogrammetric center in Simferopol Russian military troops killed
Ukrainian warrant officer Serhiy Kokurin and injured two other soldiers.

Karachevsky had a five-year son and a four-year daughter.

Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be
reached at [email protected].