In the basement, the men were stripped naked, placed on a concrete floor, and doused with water. In February 2022, prisoners with military experience who were ready to take part in combat activity, under martial law, started to be released from their places of detention, a prosecutor's office official, Andriy Sinyuk, told reporters. Both the prosecution and the defence said that they were going to appeal against the verdict as one side considered it too lenient and the other too severe.Zelensky Frees Tornado and Sends Back to the FrontIn February 2022, prisoners with military experience who were ready to take part in combat activity, under martial law, started to be released from their places of detention, a prosecutor's office official, Andriy Sinyuk, told reporters.Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainians with combat experience were released from detention and had all sanctions lifted.The criminals released under the emergency amnesty are now not just at large; they were given weapons. The neighbour found her the next morning behind the bed, the granny was dead. All in all, I was kept in the basement for 17 days.. This special project was launched to shed light on what has happened in Donbass over the past eight years, with the aim to show not only episodes of crimes by the Kiev regime against the civilian population, but also to explore the roots of the disaster occurring in the region. Members of the Ukrainian National Guard's Azov Battalion and the far-right radical group Right Sector take part in a rally in Kiev on October 14, 2016. . In autumn 2014 most of the territorial defence battalions were reorganized as motorized infantry battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is what Moskal said on 112 Ukraine TV at the time: Danil Lyashuk, known as Mujahid, a member of the Tornado national battalion in Stanitsa Luganskaya. 22nd Territorial Defence Battalion "Kharkiv", General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 24th Territorial Defence Battalion "Aidar", 34th Territorial Defence Battalion "Batkivshchyna", 40th Territorial Defence Battalion "Kryvbas", 1st Independent Motorized Infantry Battalion, 2nd Independent Motorized Infantry Battalion, "Undeclared War: Putin's Covert Invasion of Eastern Ukraine", "Ukraine crisis: Why the U.S. isn't tougher on Russia", ">Territorial Defense Battalions (BTrO / BTD)", "Ukraine's volunteer battalions: The new model army", , , , , . While a Ukrainian Army officer was giving the orders, the trainees were members of a volunteer Chechen battalion that also mixed in some Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians. In the summer of 2015, Ukraine witnessed a scandal over the Tornado battalion men whod only recently been hailed as. Immediately after the detention, they stripped the man down to his underwear, searched him, and hit him several times without finding anything.The elderly man was put in the basement, where there were eight other people besides him. [31] In social media statements by the TDF, several previously unseen battalion numbers (some exceeding the theoretical 150 number), such as the 103rd,[32] 124th,[33] 130th,[34] 251st [35] etc. The legal counsels and the Tornado members themselves used this catch.The case itself was reported to consist of 86 volumes.Witness TestimonyAs stated earlier, the court was under enormous pressure. In March 2014 acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov issued an order to create seven territorial defence battalions. Once again, let us turn to the information that a correspondent of Novaya Gazeta* was able to obtain from a former "Tornado" member:You could roughly divide the Tornado personnel into three groups. Ruslan Onyshchenko, the commander of the Tornado Volunteer Battalion of the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior and seven of his men were arrested on June 17 accused of rape and torture. Robot. Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk has offered Germany to transfer Tornado fighter jets planned for decommissioning to Ukraine. Units. 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The detainees were also forced to rape each other anally and orally. Latest Veterans News. Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainians with combat experience were released from detention and had all sanctions lifted. Written: 18:53, 27. In addition, he was in the basement in darkness and could not observe the change of day and night.An eyewitness to the detention of the elderly man in the basement was Ms H., the business manager of the Stanitsa Luganskaya settlement council, who was held in the same room for several hours, together with the detainee, and accidentally witnessed his ill-treatment.Later, SBU officers deceived Mr M. by promising to exchange him for the UAF fighters who were being held captive by illegal armed groups, and forced him to testify about his involvement in terrorist activities. Signs of torture inflicted on victims by members of the Tornado national battalionJournalists from various media outlets with different viewpoints collected the evidence. The battalion commander hit us with a plastic pipe and organised our beatings. In one of their recently released videos, Daniil Lyashuk, a former militant of the Ukrainian battalion Tornado, nicknamed Mujahid, who had previously been sentenced to 10 years in prison for war crimes in the Donbass, cheered his freedom and issued more threats against Russians. The ex-commander of the Ukrainian nationalist battalion "Tornado" Ruslan Onishchenko was released from prison - he spent seven years out of 11 in prison. Nikolai Tsukur received nine years in prison and was stripped of his rank of police lieutenant. REUTERS/VALENTYN OGIRENKO (3) SPECIAL REPORT 5 UKRAINE MAVERICK BATTALIONS and bribes are still used for everything from Ruslan Onishchenko, a former commander of the Tornado volunteer battalion, is one such example.According to witnesses and leaks, Onishchenko, together with his team and other criminals involved, has formed a new battalion stationed near Kiev. [29]After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government announced general mobilisation [30] and formed new territorial defense battalions to accommodate the influx in men. They immediately received an assault rifle and were trained by more experienced fighters. In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election several members of the battalions were elected into the Ukrainian parliament. The court ruled to commute the sentence by releasing him from prison and imposing a probation period of three years. It should be recalled that the victims and survivors of the crimes, first and foremost, the raped men, asked for a closed trial.At one point, the campaign to protect these Heroes of ATO in the press and on social media gained such momentum that Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoliy Matios decided to reveal the atrocities of the Tornado fighters live on 112 Ukraine TV.The Protocol I described the events of 17-23 March 2015.From around 17.03.2015 to 23.03.2015, members of the Tornado battalion, I am sure of it, regularly brought various men to the basement, who were systematically beaten. Veterans of the Azov Battalion, who took part in the war with Russia-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine, salute during a mass 'No Surrender' rally in Kyiv in March 2020 Sergei Supinsky . There has been scary rumours about their basements". The battalion also had a category of "white" and "grey" fighters. Residents had been contacting the police and even other national battalions about the "lawlessness" and crimes of the Tornado fighters practically from the very start.Eventually, several months later, in mid-June 2015, Hennadiy Moskal, the head of the Kiev-controlled administration of Lugansk, demanded that the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies disarm the Tornado battalion and remove it from Lugansk region. There's nothing like raising your vitality when you have someone's life in your hands, says Mujahid.From an article published by Novaya Gazeta*, a former Tornado fighter's story about Mujahid:He was the one who came up with the idea of scripting role-playing scenarios of same-sex torture-rape. As of 2014 Azov is an official part of Ukrainian armed forces, fully integrated into the structure and command chain of the armed forces which includes being subject to military tribunal and military police. The court ordered that all of them be charged 7,750 hryvnyas (about 263 USD) for court costs. They did not talk to me and did not explain the reason for my detention. How could someone recruit a gang into a battalion? There are reports that the former Tornado members have seized APCs and additional weapons from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and have started doing their usual business. It was originally created for prevention of criminal encroachment and defence of civil order on 15 April 2014, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo by Alexander Rychkov Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv has released from custody two former fighters of the Tornado Interior Ministry battalion Mykyta Kust and Maksym Hliebov, both of whom have been placed under . The Obolonsky regional court of Kiev announced the sentences of militants of the "Tornado" battalion, which were accused of tortures, rapes, and the murders of civilians of Donbass. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Including those known for their particular cruelty, penchant for sadism, paedophilia, incest and other monstrous pathologies. For example, a report by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, a Ukrainian human rights organisation, and the Truth Hounds, another human rights organisation, describes an incident involving the abduction by Shakhtyorsk fighters of several residents of Marinka, who were first used as human shields to provide cover from sniper fire. Among other things, three of the defendants were charged with committing crimes under Part 3 of Article 153 of the Criminal Code (sexual indulgence in perverse forms committed repeatedly or by a group of persons). [15] By law, every oblast in Ukraine should create its own territorial defence battalions.[5]. The Tornado battalion was founded as an occult structure which was set up and developed at the State University of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence in Donetsk, said philosopher, political scientist, . In 2022 the Territorial Defense Forces were created as a successor of the old territorial defense battalions. All those convicted fall under the Savchenko Law (one day in pre-trial detention counts as two days in prison). The law enforcers did not dare to storm the building. Here is how he commented on his actions on Ukrainian television:In other words, he knew of at least some of the crimes, and even then, in 2014, the obvious criminals were deliberately not put on trial and were never punished, but simply assigned to other "volunteer battalions" (ed. According to him, the detainee was forced to imitate sexual intercourse and pretend to suck a penis. 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