Russian army paratrooper on trial in Ukraine for shooting unarmed civilian in Irpin
Serhiy Karasyov (photo - website of the occupiers)

The commander of the 31st Guards Assault Brigade of the Airborne Forces of the Russian Armed Forces will be tried in Ukraine for shooting an unarmed civilian during the month-long occupation of the town of Irpin near Kyiv in the spring of 2022, reported the Prosecutor General's Office.

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On July 12, 2021, 39-year-old colonel Sergei Karasyov, a native of Pskov, was appointed commander of this brigade.

During March 2022, as the investigation established, the brigade commander, together with other occupiers, conducted raids on the captured part of Irpin: "Civilians who did not take part in hostilities were treated cruelly, offensively and humiliatingly; the [Russian forces] tried to identify patriotic residents."

At the beginning of March 2022, in the battles for Hostomel, the occupying paratroopers suffered, according to the BBC, the largest one-time losses: only according to open sources, at least 27 soldiers and officers were killed, mostly from the 31st brigade. At the beginning of the summer of 2022, Mediazona calculated that 31 brigades lost at least 52 people killed, including battalion commander Yagidarov.

The PGO claims that on March 25, 2022, he and his accomplices went around the apartments of the building in the residential complex "Green Building on Mechnikova". In one of the episodes, Karasyov "with a sharp movement tore out part of the hair from the head of a woman born in 1949 and hit her in the face with the butt of a firearm, knocking out her teeth."

The occupiers found a local resident in the building; because he did not have his documents on him, the brigade commander took him behind the building to the playground, where he shot him in the head with a machine gun, the investigation says.

Neighbors found the body the next morning and temporarily buried it in a park near the complex.

Фото: Google Maps
Photo: Google Maps

Now Karasyov is on trial for violating the laws and customs of war, aggravated by intentional homicide.

Almost everywhere the invaders from Russia went, and especially where they lingered, the occupiers committed murders and war crimes. What happened in Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel happened in many other villages in the north, east and south of Ukraine since the first weeks of the total invasion of the Russian Federation, in the east, and in Crimea since 2014.