Three men have been sentenced to life imprisonment for the savage torture and killing in 2014 of 16-year-old Stepan Chubenko. Without a regime change in Russia, there is little chance that the three former Donbas fighters – Vadim Pogodin, leader of the so-called ‘Kerch battalion’, and two subordinates – Mikhail Sukhomlinov and Yury Moskalev – will serve the sentences, which are the first in absentia ever passed by a Ukrainian court. Ukraine was left with no choice since Russia is openly protecting the three men, despite the prosecutor’s office of the self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [DPR] having itself established the men’s direct role in the killing. Russia will now need to explain its probable refusal to extradite the men who are hiding out in Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea. It is likely to claim that the men are now ‘Russian’ and it doesn’t extradite its own citizens. Since the chief suspect, Vadim Pogodin, was recently arrested without such citizenship, but then released, the argument will not wash.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
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Halya Coynash: Killers of Ukrainian schoolboy sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment
This combination of photos shows a former Donbas separatist leader, Vadim Pogodin (L) and Stepan Chubenko who was just 16.
