KYIV: A resident of the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk who helped Russia target a missile strike on a pizzeria last June has been jailed for life, prosecutors said Thursday.
Thirteen people including novelist Victoria Amelina were killed when a Russian ballistic missile tore through the popular “Ria Pizza” restaurant on the evening of June 27, 2023.
“A local resident was sentenced to life imprisonment for guiding the occupiers’ missile attack on the pizzeria in Kramatorsk,” the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said.
It said the man was recruited to carry out the task by an intelligence official in the Russian-controlled part of the eastern Donetsk region, who asked him to gather information about the restaurant.
“The convict agreed to the offer. In the city center, he noticed cars with military license plates in the car park and military themselves in the restaurant,” it said.
The man then covertly recorded two videos of the site, which he immediately sent to his handler via Telegram before covering up evidence of his actions, it said.
“The man was sentenced to life imprisonment with confiscation of property for high treason,” it added.
Kyiv has waged an intense crackdown on those suspected of having aided and abetted invading Russian forces since February 2022, many in its east and south.
The United Nations said last year Ukraine had opened more than 6,600 criminal cases “against individuals for collaboration and other conflict-related crimes” since the war began.
Ukraine jails man who guided deadly pizzeria strike
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Ukraine jails man who guided deadly pizzeria strike
- A local resident was sentenced to life imprisonment for guiding the occupiers’ missile attack on the pizzeria in Kramatorsk
- The man was recruited to carry out the task by an intelligence official in the Russian-controlled part of the eastern Donetsk region
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
