Russian sentenced to life in Finland for war crimes in Ukraine

Photo: Reuters

A Russian man was sentenced to life in prison by a Finnish court on Friday for war crimes he committed in 2014 in eastern Ukraine. Yan Petrovsky, also known as Voislav Torden, was part of a paramilitary group that killed an injured Ukrainian soldier.

The trial of Petrovsky was a rare case where foreign prosecutors took action against war crimes linked to the anti-Kyiv forces in eastern Ukraine. These forces were supported by Moscow long before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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Petrovsky, born in 1987, was found guilty of four out of five charges related to his actions in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which is part of the industrial Donbass area. He was a member of Rusich, a paramilitary group tied to the Russian Wagner mercenary group. Petrovsky had been under sanctions from both the European Union and the United States since 2022.

The Finnish court convicted him on four charges. These included his involvement in killing a wounded Ukrainian soldier, mutilating another soldier, and taking and sharing disrespectful photos of dead soldiers. The court stated that a fixed-term prison sentence would not be enough for the crimes he committed.

Petrovsky was arrested in Finland in 2023 when he tried to travel to France using a fake identity. The arrest was made at the request of Ukraine. However, Finland's supreme court later blocked his extradition to Ukraine.

The court did not find enough evidence to prove one of the charges. This charge involved Petrovsky’s group, Rusich, allegedly setting up an ambush, pretending to be Ukrainian soldiers, and killing 22 Ukrainian soldiers. While the court found that Rusich fighters were at the scene, they ruled that the ambush was not proven.

Petrovsky denied all the charges. His lawyer said that he plans to appeal the court's decision.