His trial had started in December 2024. Friday, March 14, Vojislav Torden, born Ian Petrovski, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Helsinki court of first instance. Accused of being one of the leaders of the Néonazi Roussitch paramilitary group, this 38 -year -old Russian was found guilty of four war crimes, committed near Louhansk, in the province of Donbass, east of Ukraine in 2014.
In kyiv, the Ukrainian prosecution welcomed a legal decision, which “Mark a key step in the fight against the impunity of the perpetrators of serious violations of international humanitarian law”. Unsurprisingly, the Russian Embassy in Finland denounced, for its part, “The partiality of the Helsinki court, which pronounced a manifestly politicized sentence against a Russian citizen”.
The facts alleged against Vojislav Torden took place on September 5, 2014, in the separatist region of Louhansk, where Ukrainian soldiers of the Aïdar battalion were caught in ambush, at a checkpoint, by several pre-commissioned paramilitary groups. Making them believe that they belonged to the Ukrainian forces, the separatists allowed the convoy to advance, composed of a truck and a car, transporting twenty-six Ukrainian soldiers, before opening fire. Twenty-two soldiers were killed and four wounded.
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