A resident of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, was sentenced to life in prison for having guided a Russian strike on a restaurant in the city, which left 13 dead in June 2023, the General Prosecutor's Office announced on Thursday Ukrainian. On June 27, 2023, a Russian ballistic missile killed 13 people at dinner time – including four children and the writer Victoria Amelina – and injured 64 others in a restaurant in Kramatorsk, the
“Ria Pizza”
, very popular and notably appreciated by the military.
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“A resident is sentenced to life in prison for having guided the occupiers' missile attack on a pizzeria in Kramatorsk
,” the prosecutor's office said in a press release. The man, whose identity has not been revealed, was
“recruited”
by Russia and found guilty of
“high treason”
, according to the same source. His task was to confirm
“the presence of Ukrainian soldiers”
in the restaurant. To this end, he
“recorded two videos which he immediately sent to his interlocutor”
on the messaging application Telegram, the prosecution said.
Collaboration
A few days after the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of the arrest of a man, presenting him as
“the person who coordinated this terrorist attack”
. However, it was impossible to immediately know on Thursday whether it was the same individual.
For two years of Russian invasion, Ukraine has sought to bring to justice anyone who collaborated with Russian forces, particularly in territories occupied for a time by Moscow then reconquered by kyiv's troops. The Attorney General's Office had recorded more than 7,000 cases of collaboration at the start of the year, and thousands more on similar charges. As of December 2023, 941 verdicts had already been handed down in Ukraine in collaboration cases, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).