Russia jails soldiers who killed an entire family in Ukraine
A Russian court has sentenced two soldiers to life imprisonment for killing a family of nine in occupied Ukraine, marking a rare instance of Russia holding its military personnel accountable for alleged war crimes.
Prosecutors stated that Anton Sopov, 21, and Stanislav Rau, 28, were responsible for the deaths of the Kapkanets family in their home in the Donetsk region last year. The victims included two children, aged five and nine.
According to Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, the family was celebrating a birthday when the attack occurred. Details surrounding the case remain unclear, as the trial was conducted behind closed doors due to military secrecy, Russian media reported.
Sopov and Rau were found guilty of killing 53-year-old Eduard Kapkanets, his wife Tatiana, their adult sons and their spouses, a nine-year-old granddaughter, a four-year-old grandson, and a more distant relative.
Ukrainian officials at the time said they believed the family was murdered for refusing to give up their house to the Russian troops.
State news agency Tass reported that the men had been convicted of murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred”.
The Ukrainian city of Volnovakha was captured by Russian forces just weeks after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Most of the town has been destroyed.
Russia denies all allegations of war crimes in Ukraine, despite well-documented evidence to the contrary.
This includes the bombing of a theatre in Mariupol which had been sheltering hundreds of people in March 2022 and the killing of hundreds of people in the town of Bucha that month.
Russian forces are also accused of running a network of torture chambers across occupied Ukraine, where civilians and prisoners of war are tortured and in some cases killed.
The UN has accused Russian forces in Ukraine of rapes, “widespread” torture and killings and the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Vladimir Putin’s arrest.
