A Russian serviceman suspected of committing a war crime against a Lithuanian citizen on Ukrainian territory was transferred from Ukraine to Lithuania this week.

Source: European Pravda, citing Delfi and a statement by Lithuanian Prosecutor General Nida Grunskiene at a Friday press conference

Details: On 30 October, Vilnius District Court granted a request from the Prosecutor General's Office, ordering the suspect to be held in custody for three months.

The soldier has been charged in Lithuania with war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, including torture and unlawful detention.

Under Lithuanian law, he faces between 10 and 20 years in prison or life imprisonment.

The investigation established that from March to September 2022, Russian Armed Forces personnel, including members of the 177th Separate Guards Marine Regiment of the Caspian Flotilla, were involved in running a filtration camp at a training base located on the premises of the Melitopol military airfield.

"Civilians and prisoners of war were unlawfully held there and subjected to torture and humiliating treatment. One of them was a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania," Grunskiene said.

She added that in August 2023, Ukrainian Armed Forces detained a leading seaman from the aforementioned regiment.

"There is reason to suspect that he, along with other Russian servicemen, did not just guard illegally detained civilians and prisoners of war at the camp, but also took part in beating them, torturing them, locking them in a metal safe, strangling them to the point of unconsciousness, suspending them with their hands tied, exposing them to freezing cold air, dousing them with cold water and inflicting electric shock injuries," Grunskiene stated.

The decision to extradite the suspect to Lithuania was made personally by Ukraine's Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.

Background:

• In early September, Finland began an investigation into a former Wagner Group mercenary who had been detained in the country in summer 2025.
• In April, a Latvian citizen was sentenced to imprisonment for fighting in Ukraine on the side of Russian forces.

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