The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) began an investigation after Babelʼs material about the torture and death of mobilized people in the "Skelya" assault regiment.
This is stated in the Bureauʼs statement.
The relevant data was entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations under Part 5 of Article 426-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — abuse of authority by the military.
The Bureau is currently trying to establish a picture of the events, verify the authenticity of the facts, and also clarify all the circumstances of the events described in the investigation.
The department promises "proper legal assessment" of the actions of all those involved if their involvement in the offenses is confirmed.
Whatʼs happening in "Skelya"
On June 23, Babel published a major investigation into the situation in the 425th Assault Regiment "Skelya". We interviewed over 30 witnesses, mostly relatives of those mobilized to "Skelya", as well as a dozen soldiers from the regiment who escaped or are still serving there.
Babel has counted 26 deaths in the regiment’s training centers over the past six months, with the official cause of most of them being pneumonia. We have also described cases of torture and abuse of those undergoing training.
In particular, Babel has obtained a video showing the aftermath of the beating of one of the “Skelya” soldiers Oleksandr Semenov. He later died in hospital.
"Skelya" itself has already reacted: they say that the authors of the material are making generalizations that reduce the history of the unit to individual tragic cases, and most of the deaths described occurred in the hospital or on the way to the hospital and were related to the illnesses and health conditions of the mobilized.
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