Ukraine has handed over a Russian soldier accused of committing war crimes against a Lithuanian citizen in occupied Ukraine – the first such transfer since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Lithuanian and Ukrainian officials said Friday.
“On October 29 of this year, a person suspected of war crimes in Ukraine committed against a Lithuanian citizen was brought from Ukraine to Lithuania and handed over,” Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė told reporters at a news conference.
She called the transfer a “highly significant” result in Lithuania’s ongoing pretrial investigation into war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko described the case as “an unprecedented, historic event”, marking the first time a detained Russian soldier has been handed over to another country for criminal prosecution.
According to Grunskienė, the investigation found that between March and September 2022, members of Russia’s armed forces – including personnel from the 177th Separate Marine Regiment of the Caspian Flotilla – participated in organizing a so-called filtration camp at a training facility on the grounds of the Melitopol military airfield.
“Civilians and prisoners of war were unlawfully detained, tortured and humiliated there – among them, a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania,” she said.
Ukrainian forces captured the suspect, a senior sailor from the regiment, near the village of Robotyne in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region in August 2023.
He is suspected of guarding unlawfully detained civilians and prisoners of war and of personally taking part in their torture, including beatings, suffocation until loss of consciousness, hanging by bound hands, dousing with cold water in freezing temperatures and using electric shocks, Grunskienė said.
On October 30, the Vilnius District Court ordered the suspect held in custody for three months. Under Lithuanian law, he faces 10 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment if convicted.
Kravchenko said the Lithuanian victim was a civilian who did not participate in hostilities. The Russian marine was identified after Ukrainian authorities questioned captured soldiers about possible war crimes.
The Lithuanian citizen, who survived the torture, reported the crimes to law enforcement after escaping captivity, Kravchenko said, adding that “he was very lucky, knowing that Russian soldiers usually killed their victims after torture”. Another Lithuanian citizen was reportedly killed.
One of the perpetrators involved in the killing has since died in combat, Kravchenko said.
Neither prosecutor identified the Lithuanian victims by name, but Grunskienė confirmed that one of the cases under investigation concerns the killing of Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius in Mariupol in 2022.
The joint Lithuanian-Ukrainian investigation, coordinated through Eurojust, was launched on March 1, 2022. It is being conducted under five articles of Lithuania’s Criminal Code by prosecutors from the Prosecutor General’s Office, together with investigators from the Criminal Police Bureau and the Financial Crime Investigation Service.
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