On December 6, the Krasnohradskyi district court of Kharkiv Oblast sentenced Russian officer Klym Kerzhaiev to 15 years in prison for violating the laws and customs of the war.

The press office of the General Prosecutor’s office reported about this.  

According to their investigation, in June, near the Velyka Komyshuvaha of the Uzium district, Russian soldiers shot at a civilian car. The accused is 26 years old, a Moscow resident, senior lieutenant, and unit commander of the Russian army. 

The investigation established that on June 23, he gave the order to shoot at the car in which a married couple from Bahmut in Donetsk oblast tried to evacuate their senior sick parents. The woman tried to save the man from the Russian shelling. 

Ukrainian troops noticed the attack on the car while doing aerial intelligence. The woman saw a drone and decided to follow it to avoid danger. The drone led her to a place where Ukrainian soldiers were. Meanwhile, Russians believed that the man died and threw his body into a gutter. 

He was unconscious for about 30 hours and then made his way back to the AFU base. 

Read more. Prosecutors: 512 children killed in Ukraine due to Russian armed aggression

“When calling his wife, the occupier laughed and told his wife, ‘I’ve killed a person today,'” the Prosecutor’s Office informs. 

Investigators note that the officer’s guilt was proved via material evidence and the results of radio interceptions. He was tried in absentia, and his lawyer and the victims were present at the court hearings. 

Earlier, the Kharkiv regional Prosecutor’s Office reported about an indictment of the Russian officer being submitted to the court. At the end of March, police reported that the Russian officer in question was identified. The documentary Follow Me was filmed based on these events.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the National Police documented more than 100 thousand war crimes of the Russian Federation. 

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