Russian investigators claim two soldiers arrested over Volnovakha killings.

The Russian Investigative Committee claimed that two Russian soldiers had been arrested on Oct.

30 in connection with the murder of all nine members of a Ukrainian family in occupied Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast. The two soldiers in question were identified as contract personnel from Russia's Far East, the report said. Ukrainian law enforcement alleged earlier on Oct.

30 that Russian forces entered a home and murdered nine civilians, including three women and two children, aged five and nine. According to the preliminary Ukrainian investigation, Russian soldiers approached the home several days before and demanded that the residents vacate so that they could reside there. The residents refused even though the Russian soldiers threatened them, and the soldiers left.

They returned on Oct.

27, the Prosecutor's Office said, and shot all nine members of the family while they slept. The statement from Russia's Investigative Committee corroborated the basic facts of the case, namely the death toll, but did not mention the other details of the murders cited by the Ukrainian report. Russia has repeatedly denied that its forces commit crimes in Ukraine.

A Russian soldier confessed to murdering a Ukrainian civilian in the Kyiv region at the beginning of the full-scale invasion and was arrested by Russian authorities- not for the murder, but for spreading "fake news" about the war. A report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Siberian service in March 2023 said that a court in the Russian city of Khabarovsk gave the soldier a suspended 5.5-year sentence.

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News Editor

Nate Ostiller is a News Editor. He works on special projects as a researcher and writer for The Red Line Podcast, covering Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and focused primarily on digital misinformation, memory politics, and ethnic conflict. Nate has a Master's degree in Russian and Eurasian Studies from the University of Glasgow, and spent two years studying abroad at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.

Originally from the USA, he is currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia.