Russische Soldaten, die 1.000 ihrer eigenen noch in der Ukraine kämpfenden Zivilisten ermordeten

***The Telegraph reports:***

Russian soldiers who have killed or tried to kill more than 1,000 of their own civilians are serving on the front line, an investigation has found.

The investigation by Mediazona, the independent Russian news outlet, found that soldiers implicated in homicide and other serious assaults overwhelmingly returned to combat rather than faced trial or imprisonment.

Military courts limited transparency around such cases after the [full-scale invasion began in 2022](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/25/why-has-russia-invaded-ukraine-attack-war/), refusing to publish records of proceedings, erasing references to defendants’ wartime service and deleting rulings after publication.

Ten case studies scrutinised by Mediazona included one soldier who shot a woman at close range with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in Crimea for criticising the war and another who fatally assaulted a pensioner with a tree branch.

In nine of the 10 cases, defendants went back to war instead of serving their sentence for the crimes. On some occasions, relatives of the victims were told that they would not receive compensation as the perpetrator had gone back to combat.

Military courts have received an estimated 1,045 cases of murder and serious bodily harm that led to death since the full-scale invasion, according to Mediazona.

The real number of cases is likely to be higher due to the lack of transparency in military courts and the fact that those who had finished their service at the time of the crime would likely be rerouted to civilian courts rather than the military docket.

**Read more**: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/09/russian-soldiers-murdered-1000-civilians-fighting-ukraine/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/09/russian-soldiers-murdered-1000-civilians-fighting-ukraine/)