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Two Ukrainian commanders charged in absentia with shelling Donbas residents

MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/. The Russian Investigative Committee has charged in absentia commander of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 10th mountain assault brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Zubanich, and commander of the 1st battalion of the 14th separate mechanized brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Prokopiv, with shelling the civilian population of the Donbass region, the committee’s spokesperson, Svetlana Petrenko, said on Tuesday.

According to Petrenko, "the investigators have ascertained the complicity of Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Zubanich, the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 10th mountain assault brigade, in organizing, together with this brigade’s military servicemen, an artillery bombardment of the villages of Krasnogorovka and Staromikhailovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic with the use of heavy weapons on June 15, 2016, which injured two civilians not involved in the armed conflict," she said.

She also noted that the investigators had ascertained the complicity of commander of the 1st battalion of the 14th separate mechanized brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Prokopiv, in organizing, together with this military unit’s servicemen, the artillery bombardments of Donetsk’s Petrovsky and Kievsky districts on March 24 and 28, 2016, which left a civilian wounded and damaged several houses.

"The evidence collected made it possible to charge Zubanich and Prokopiv in absentia with organizing the use of means and methods prohibited by the Russian Federation’s international treaty in the armed conflict, that is, committing crimes under Part 3, Article 33, Part 1, Article 356 of Russia’s Criminal Code," Petrenko said.