2 Russian soldiers who massacred Ukrainian family of 9 sentenced to life in prison

A Russian court sentenced two soldiers to life in prison for the massacre of a family of nine people in their home in occupied Ukraine, state media reported on Friday.

Russian prosecutors said in October 2023, the two Russian soldiers, Anton Sopov and Stanislav Rau, entered the home of the Kapkanets family in the city of Volnovakha with guns equipped with silencers.

They then shot all nine family members who lived there, including two children aged 5 and 9.

The southern district military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.

The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine.

Kyiv alleged at the time that the Russian soldiers had murdered the family in their sleep after they refused to move out of their home to allow Russian soldiers to live there.

“The occupiers killed the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give up their home,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said a day after the murder.

Russian forces seized the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region at the start of their full-scale military offensive. Russian artillery strikes virtually destroyed it.

Russian soldiers have been accused of multiple instances of killing civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities they have occupied since February 2022.

Moscow has always denied targeting civilians and tried to claim reports of atrocities at places like Bucha were fake, despite widespread evidence from multiple independent sources. In 2022, independent journalists who went into Bucha found the streets littered with bodies. The dead were wearing civilian clothing, and some had their hands tied behind their backs, apparently executed. Others were buried in a mass grave.

The arrest and sentencing in this case is a rare example of Russia admitting to a crime committed by its troops in Ukraine.

State media did not say what prosecutors determined the reason for the attack was.

TASS suggested it could have been a “domestic dispute” while both the independent Radio Free Europe and Kommersant business outlets said it could have been linked to a dispute over obtaining vodka.

The trial was held in secret.

The independent Radio Free Europe outlet reported that Rau, 28, and Sopov, 21 were mercenaries for the Wagner paramilitary before joining Russia’s official army.

They had both received state awards a few months before the mass murder, it said.

Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and 9 crew members were killed last year when Prigozhin’s plane crashed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, two months after he led a brief mutiny against Russia’s top military brass.