Two teenagers from the temporarily occupied Berdyansk Tihran Ohannisyan and Nikita Khanhanov were killed by Russian snipers. Tigran was shot in the heart, and Nikita in the head.
This was reported by the coordinator of the organization "Media Initiative for Human Rights" Olha Reshetylova on the air of "Radio Svoboda" "Svoboda Live".
According to her, if we assume that the boys started shooting first, then the occupation police did not try to neutralize them in any other way to save their lives, but instead killed them immediately.
Before that, the occupiers pressured the teenagers for half a year, searched them, investigators came with several police jeeps, says Reshetylova. Tihran Ohannisyan was abducted and detained by the local police, tortured.
Olha Reshetylova added that in the last weeks before the death of the boys, the pressure on them increased, because the so-called "investigators" prepared accusations against the teenagers for "sabotage" — they were allegedly preparing to blow up electric poles on the Melitopol railway. The case had to be brought to court.
Half an hour before the reports of the shooting, Tihran was talking to his mother. She said there was nothing in their conversation that indicated risky plans.
"The occupying authorities say that civilians and passers-by were allegedly injured in this shootout. However, we cannot confirm such information at the moment. We saw all of this correspondence in local chat rooms as the shooting unfolded. This is a very short period. And there was no information that any civilians were injured there," added Reshetylova.
She is convinced that the occupiers are trying to "hang" the murdered for crimes they did not commit. At the same time, he notes that "even if they had taken such a desperate step, they would have been made "terrorists" because they were tortured, abused, and were left with no other choice."
- On June 15, 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding an end to the persecution of Ukrainian teenagers Tihran Ohannisyan and Nikita Khanhanov from occupied Berdyansk and to allow them to leave the territory controlled by Ukraine.
- Ukrainian law enforcement officers initiated criminal proceedings for the murder of children. "Media Initiative for Human Rights" will conduct its own investigation.