A military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Russian contract servicemen Stanislav Rau and Anton Sopov to life imprisonment for mass murder in occupied Volnovakha in October 2023. They killed nine members of one family, including two children.
This was reported by the Russian media Kommersant.
Russian troops occupied Volnovakha in the Donetsk region in March 2022.
On the night of October 28, 2023, 28-year-old Rau and 21-year-old Sopov broke into the private house of the Kapkanets family with special machine guns designed for silent shooting and shot everyone there.
Convicted Stanislav Rau.
The victims of the Russians were the 53-year-old head of the family Eduard Kapkanets, his wife Tetyana, their two adult sons with their wives, a nine-year-old granddaughter, a four-year-old grandson and another relative of the owners. Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets wrote that on the day of the murder, the family was celebrating a birthday.
Neighbors of the Kapkanets family saw two men in military uniform leaving the house on a motorcycle at night. The motorcycle was caught by two surveillance cameras installed in Volnovakha, so its owner, one of the defendants, was detained a day after the crime. It turned out that he rented a room not far from the house of the shot family, and his motorcycle was parked in the yard. His accomplice was also detained the next day.
Initially, it was assumed that Rau and Sopov killed the Kapkanets family, trying to get vodka, which was prohibited at the front. According to Kommersantʼs source, they did not plead guilty.
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