Investigators have identified three members of the Russian military who were allegedly involved in the shooting of Ukrainian civilians trying to escape Irpin in March 2022, according to Ivan Dulkai, senior investigator from the Main Investigative Department of the National Police.
They include the commander of the reconnaissance platoon of the 173rd separate reconnaissance battalion, and two soldiers from the 137th Guards Parachute Regiment of the 106th Guards Airborne Division.
Police have established that between March 5-6, 2022, the Russian military shot at 10 vehicles on Oleha Koshevoho and Nezalezhnosti streets. As a result of the attacks, nine people trying to evacuate were killed and 12 more were injured.
According to Dulkai, Russian soldiers threw a grenade into the first car of the evacuation convoy, which included a family with a 1.5-year-old child. The driver died on the spot and the front-seat passenger later succumbed to his injuries. The woman with her child survived.
Russian soldiers continued to shoot at other vehicles in the convoy despite them not posing any threat. They then took the survivors and held them for several hours in a captured house, but "they did not allow anyone to take away the severely wounded who were lying on the ground and slowly dying, nor did they allow the bodies of the dead to be taken away," according to Dulkai.
The police conducted their investigation by collecting survivor testimonies to gain a better understanding of what happened at the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
"The main task of law enforcement officers is to identify war criminals and bring them to justice both in Ukrainian and international courts," said Dulkai.
