The Anti-Corruption Center (ACC), based on documents it has gained access to, claims that State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) may have known about crimes in the 425th separate assault regiment "Skelya", which had been going on since at least March 2026.
The document contains a response from the Office of the Military Ombudsman to a request from the MPs. It contains copies of eight letters that the Office of the Military Ombudsman sent to the State Bureau of Investigation and the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office from March to June 2026.
In particular, the letters describe such possible crimes as failure to provide medical care resulting in death, threats with firearms and combat grenades, unlawful deprivation of liberty, use of physical violence, torture, and more.
ACC claims that SBI mainly forwarded these letters to law enforcement officers and the Military Law Enforcement Service (MLES). As an example, they cite a situation when on March 30, SBI received a letter with a complaint from a soldierʼs sister about the beating of her brother, after which he was not provided with medical care, as a result of which he died in the hospital.
However, SBI investigator replied that there were no sufficient grounds to enter the information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations (URPTI). Therefore, he forwarded the materials to MLES for “additional verification of the facts”, although the law explicitly obliges the investigator to begin an investigation after being notified of the crime.
According to ACC, SBI began investigating the violations only after Babel published its investigation on June 23.
The statement also claims that the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office (PGO) did not respond to letters sent in July 2025.
What preceded
On June 23, Babel published a major investigation into torture in 425 Separate Assault Regiment "Skelya" and 25 cases of deaths of mobilized people over the past six months. After that, inspections began in the regiment, and commander Yuriy Harkavy was suspended from duty. Later, we counted at least seven more such deaths, more details about their circumstances in the news.
Following the Babel article, the State Bureau of Investigation launched a pre-trial investigation. On June 24, the commander of the 425th Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Yuriy Harkavy, was suspended from duty for the duration of the investigation.
And a month later, on July 30, Texts published an investigation into the situation in the 225th separate assault regiment. The mediaʼs interlocutors spoke about systematic beatings, torture, and barricade detachments in the regiment.
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