YESSENTUKI, March 12, /ITAR-TASS/. City court in Yessentuki, a resort town in Russia’s southern Stavropol territory, has entertained investigators’ petition to authorize an arrest in absentia of the Ukrainian militant Alexander Muzychko, more widely known as Sashko Bily, a spokesman for the court told Itar-Tass.

“Materials submitted by the investigators have been considered and a pretrial measure in the form of arrest has been appointed,” he said, adding that the examination of the case in the courtroom had taken two days.

Sashko Bily has been placed on an international wanted list on suspicion of involvement in the tortures and killings of Russian soldiers in Chechnya in the period of 1994 through to the 2000’s.

Russia’s Investigations Committee says he has the murders of no less than twenty Russian servicemen to his account.

Evidence obtained from a member of the far-right Ukrainian paramilitary grouping calling itself the Ukrainian Insurgent Army/Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (UIA/OUN) suggests that Muzychko and other paramilitaries took part in combat clashes with the Russian Federal Forces in Chechnya in 1994 and 1995 during the storming of Grozny.

The militant told the investigators he saw more than once in January 1995 that Muzychko was involved in barbaric tortures of imprisoned servicemen, after which he killed them.

He also informed the investigators of other crimes committed by Muzychko and UIA/OUN thugs in the period in question and identified him on the photos as a individual who had taken part in combat actions on the Chechen militants’ side.