Volnovakha, Donetsk region, 60 kilometers from occupied Mariupol. Since March 2022, the town has been under the control of the Russian armed forces. For its fierce resistance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded the city the status of "hero-city".
In the afternoon of October 29, 2023, in various media, both Ukrainian and Russian, there was information about the killing of 9 civilians. Presumably, the family was shot by the Russian military.
Crime scene
On October 29, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported the murder of nine residents of the town of Volnovakha, two of whom were children. This report contained few specifics, saying only that the causes and circumstances of the crime had to be established.
However, journalists from Russian Telegram channels found out that the crime happened in the house of Natalia and Andriy, local residents who lived together with their two children. The identities of the other five killed have not been established. The same journalists were the first to put forward the version that the killers were Russian servicemen.
According to the interlocutors of the Astra channel, the murder was committed on Friday, October 27. According to the version of an acquaintance of the family of the victims, the military man "did not share something" with the owner of the house, after which the family was shot. "Right away the top brass arrived and they started trying to cover everything up, the neighbors were told to keep quiet," an acquaintance of the family told Astra.
"Their mother-in-law had a birthday party on Friday and everyone was killed that night. Yesterday their relatives started looking for them, called the police, opened the house and they were all killed," another neighbor of the murdered men told Astra.
Another publication Baza reported that on the eve of the deaths, October 28, at two o'clock in the morning, the residents of the private house had a conflict with unknown people in unmarked military uniforms. They also found out that at least 7 dead were members of the same family, 4 of them lived in the house, where the murder was committed, and 3 more were their relatives.
Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, was the first to officially announce the version of the murder. He said that the family was celebrating their birthday when the Russian military came demanding to provide them with a house. After a refusal on the part of the owner of the house, the entire family was killed.
The alleged surname of the owners of the house - Kapkanets - also became known.
Reconstruction of events
Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazanskyy published one of the versions of what happened. This crime resonated in the chat rooms of the city of Volnovakha. Several local residents said that the family was killed by Kadyrovtsy - soldiers of the private army of Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya and a close associate of Putin.
According to them, the Kadyrovites came to Andriy Kapkanets demanding that he provide them with a house for soldiers. After he refused, they shot the entire family. According to local residents, that evening the family was celebrating the birthday (probably of the mother of the deceased Andriy, as Astra wrote), when one or more Chechens broke into the house and killed the family.
This version is evidenced by the alleged names of the dead, which were published by Ukrainian Telegram channels. Of the nine killed - eight have the same surname. Most likely they were Andriy's parents, his wife, two children 9 and 5 years old, his wife's brother, as well as two who are also relatives of Andriy.
Most likely the whole family, or most of it, lived together in the house of his parents.
The whole family was shot in their sleep, as eyewitnesses and acquaintances of the murdered say. Astra publication that all were killed in their beds by gunshots to the head.
This information was confirmed after the publication of horrifying photos from the scene of the crime. They show that everyone was asleep in their beds at the time of the murders. There are no visible signs of struggle or even attempts to escape. According to one version, 2-3 well professional military men acted, who went about the massacre with night vision devices and automatic rifles with silencers. The latter fact explains why no one woke up from the shots that sounded in the neighboring rooms.
The Ukrainian prosecutor's office opened an investigation into the murder for violation of the laws and customs of war. The prosecutor's office voiced the official version of what happened.
According to preliminary data, in October 2023, persons of Caucasian appearance dressed in military uniform came to the private house. The armed men demanded that the family who lived in the house vacate it for the residence of one of the units of the Russian army. They. received a refusal from the owner of the house, a 53-year-old man (most likely senior Kapkanets). The military began threatening him and his family with reprisals. They left the house, but returned on October 27. They shot the entire family, including three women and two children, with firearms.
Representatives of the occupation authorities began their investigation into the events in Volnovakha. In particular, they disseminated information about the suspects. According to the orientation of the occupation police published by Telegram-channels, the killers were two, they arrived at the scene of the crime on a motorcycle. At the same time, the occupants do not hide the fact that the killers were most likely military.
Although the occupation forces claim to investigate and search for the killers, locals doubt that they will be found. In particular, they report that immediately after the murder, other Russian military personnel arrived at the scene of the attack in an attempt to cover their tracks.
This case risks being unsolved, as do many other crimes by the Russian army in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
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