Russian authorities have arrested a senior military colonel and charged him with large-scale fraud, state news agency TASS reported on Thursday. Previously, the colonel was the military commander responsible for the 2022 massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Authorities arrested Colonel Artyom Gorodilov on July 3 and charged him with fraud of at least one million rubles ($11,236), TASS reported. A military court ordered him to be held until August 19, and he faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, TASS reported. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Colonel Gorodilov currently commands the 83rd Guards Airborne Brigade, a unit based in the Russian Far East, operating in eastern Ukraine. Previously, he commanded the 234th Guards Airborne Regiment, based in the Russian city of Pskov.
An investigation by the New York Times In 2022, it was determined that members of the 234th Regiment were behind the massacre of civilians on Yablunska Street in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, when the place was occupied by Moscow troops in the early days of the war.
Colonel Gorodilov commanded the unit at the time and was present in the town where hundreds of civilians were killed, in some cases brutally executed. Russian troops withdrew from the area in early 2022.
The US government has imposed sanctions on Colonel Gorodilov. last year for what it called “his involvement in serious violations of human rights, in particular extrajudicial killings”.
He was promoted to colonel days after the images from Bucha were made public and turned the suburb into a global symbol of the horrors inflicted on occupied Ukrainian towns by Russian forces.
Moscow has denied involvement in the Bucha killings, with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin calling the event “a provocation.” However, the Times identified two dozen members of the 234th Regiment who were in Bucha at the time of the massacre, in part by tracing phone numbers that the military called in Russia from the Ukrainian victims’ cellphones.
