Ukraine hands over to Lithuania a captured occupier involved in torture of people in Melitopol

For the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has handed over a Russian invader to a foreign country - Lithuania - for actual criminal prosecution for war crimes. This was reported by Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.

On October 30, the Vilnius District Court, at the request of the Lithuanian General Prosecutor's Office, took the suspect into custody for three months. This is a senior sailor of the military police of the Russian Armed Forces, who was captured by the Defense Forces in Zaporizhzhia region near the village of Robotyno in 2023.

According to law enforcement, he was involved in the illegal detention, torture and inhuman treatment of civilians and prisoners of war in the temporarily occupied Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region.

"Beatings, torture with electric current, strangulation, keeping people in metal safes and other horrors that are even hard to imagine, he used all this together with other soldiers of his unit," Kravchenko said, adding that one of his victims was a Lithuanian citizen.

In Lithuania, he is suspected of war crimes, torture, illegal imprisonment, and violation of the Geneva Conventions. The occupier faces life imprisonment.

The Prosecutor General emphasized that this was made possible by the effective work of the Joint Investigation Team "Case of Ukraine" and partnership with Lithuanians.

"This is not just a legal action. This is a clear signal to every war criminal: you will not be able to hide from responsibility in any country of the free world. Justice will be served," Kravchenko said.

• On October 31, 2024, in Finland, Russian mercenary Petrovsky was charged with crimes committed in Ukraine in 2014. The prosecutor's office demanded that he live imprisonment.
• In March 2025, Petrovsky received a life sentence. Finland cooperated with Ukraine to ensure that he received a life.