The Ukrainian prosecutor general's office said Tuesday it had charged members of the Russian military and a Russian mercenary group as suspects in the high-profile murder of a Ukrainian village mayor and two members of her family.
According to investigators, the suspects abducted the mayor of Motyzhyn and her husband and son to a temporary base, where they tortured them in an attempt to obtain information about Ukrainian troops and territorial defense forces and subsequently murdered them.
The bodies of the mayor and her family members were found partly buried in a shallow grave.
According to the statement from the prosecutor general's Office, the suspects allegedly robbed civilians, tortured and killed them and burned their homes. The statement said pre-trial investigations had been carried out by the investigative department of the main directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv and Kyiv region; it did not name the suspects.