Crimes of the Tornado battalion case

Special duty police patrol company “Tornado”
Рота патрульної служби міліції особливого призначення «Торнадо»
Active	23 October 2014 - 18 June 2015
Country	Ukraine
Allegiance	Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ukraine)
Branch	Special Police Forces (Ukraine)
Type	Volunteer battalion
Garrison/HQ	Stanytsia Luhanska, Lysychansk, Pryvillia
Commanders
Notable commanders	Ruslan Onyshchenko

Case of the Crimes of the "Tornado" battalion is a criminal case opened in connection with numerous serious crimes committed by personnel of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion Tornado during the War in Donbas.

According to the military prosecutor's office of Ukraine, the battalion's fighters practiced extrajudicial killings, torture and rape against the civilian population. In addition, it turned out that every fourth of the Tornado personnel had a criminal record. The investigation received great public and political resonance, the court was subjected to strong pressure from representatives of the Ukrainian volunteer movement.

In the end, some volunteers from the Tornado battalion were found guilty of criminal charges (kidnappings, sexual assault, etc.)

Background

The Ukrainian volunteer battalion “Tornado” was created on the basis of the “Shakhtersk” battalion, which was disbanded for looting. Before its dissolution, fighters of the "Shakhtersk" battalion took part in battles in the area of Mariupol, Marinka, and Pesok, distinguishing themselves by a number of crimes and odious statements. For example, the report of the Ukrainian human rights organization “Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights” describes an episode of the illegal abduction by Shakhtersk fighters of several residents of Marinka, who were first used as human shields to cover them from sniper fire. Then, they were kept for some time with plastic bags on their heads, beaten and forced to do dirty and hard work.

On October 16, 2014, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov ordered the disbandment of "Shakhtersk" due to frequent cases of looting, and the former chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Service, General Mykola Malomuzh, confirmed the presence of serious discipline problems in the battalion, which prevent the establishment of normal relations with the local population. After disbandment, part of the Shakhtersk personnel ended up in the Tornado company of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Already on November 2, 2014, six Tornado fighters were detained in Kyiv by the Security Service of Ukraine with an entire arsenal of weapons, which, according to SBU representatives, were planned to be used for raider actions. Then the conflict between the Tornado fighters and the head of the Zaporizhzhia administration, Oleksandr Sin, whom they accused of promoting separatism, became public in the press. After this, the Tornado battalion was transferred to the Luhansk region in the ATO zone.

Chronology of events

First charges

In mid-June 2015, the Chairman of the Luhansk Administration Hennadiy Moskal accused the Tornado fighters of blocking cargo transportation by rail and demanded that the Ukrainian security forces disarm the battalion. Representatives of the battalion stated that they stopped only one train traveling from Alchevsk to Dnipropetrovsk, which, according to them, was carrying smuggled iron.

On June 17, 2015, eight Tornado fighters and their commander Onyshchenko (real name Ruslan Ilyich Abalmaz) were detained. Subsequently, two of the eight detainees were released. Then four more fighters were detained.

After the discovery of numerous facts of violence and murder, Avakov signed an order to disband the Tornado company. The Tornado fighters refused to disband, took up a perimeter defense, mined the perimeter of their base, installed automatic grenade launchers, organized six sniper pairs and prepared a car to be blown up at the entrance. For some time, the situation was escalated, but full-fledged hostilities were avoided and the battalion was transferred from the Luhansk region to the Donetsk region for disbandment.

The chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatolii Matios, reported that every fourth Tornado fighter had a criminal record.

Progress of the investigation

On June 19, 2015, the investigation began to conduct an examination of the scandalous video recordings seized from Tornado fighters. In September 2015, the Ukrainian military prosecutor's office announced the completion of the pre-trial investigation against the Tornado fighters and incriminating them with seven articles of the criminal code (creation of a criminal organization, illegal imprisonment, kidnapping, torture, “forcible gratification of sexual passion in an unnatural way” etc.). The fighters of the Tornado battalion stated that, meanwhile, smuggling continues in the ATO zone and they are not happy with it. Due to the closed trial, they went on a hunger strike.

Identified torture sites

• Stanytsia Luhanska - the building of the railway hospital.

Court

On August 2, 2016, the Obolonsky District Court of Kyiv began considering the case of the disbanded special company “Tornado”. Supporters of the defendants gathered outside the court building and demanded to be allowed into the hearing, which was held behind closed doors. Activists climbed over the court fence and threw bags of flour, flares, smoke bombs, and tires at law enforcement officers. As a result of gas poisoning, 12 police officers and 15 National Guard soldiers were injured. During court hearings, Anatolii Plamadyala doused prosecutors with a foul-smelling substance similar to feces from bottles brought under their clothes in order to disrupt the interrogation of the victims.

As the police reported: “The investigative department of the Obolon police department entered the information into the unified register of pre-trial investigations under two articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: article 293 (group violation of public order), part three of article 342 (resistance to a government official, law enforcement officer, government official, a member of a public formation for the protection of public order and the state border or a military serviceman)”.

On August 4, 2016, due to the impossibility of bringing the suspects to the courtroom, the hearing of the Obolonsky Court of Kyiv in the case of the fighters of the Tornado battalion was postponed to August 9. Political expert Sergei Bykov, speaking on the "Voice of the Capital" radio station, said: “I believe that Ukrainian law enforcement officers must do everything to prevent such protests from happening in the future. It is quite possible that even by force, since in a rule-of-law state there must be an absolute monopoly on power on the part of the state. Usually the state has a monopoly on violence.”

On August 7, 2016, Chornovol accused the Tornado battalion of causing her husband’s death.

Sentence

The consideration of an 80 volumes case, in which 111 witnesses and 13 victims participated, lasted almost 2 years.

On April 7, 2017, the Obolonsky District Court of Kyiv issued a guilty verdict against 12 fighters of the disbanded Tornado battalion. Ex-company commander Ruslan Onyshchenko received 11 years in prison, his deputy Mykola Tsukur - 9 years, Belarusian citizen Daniil Lyashuk - 10 years, Ilya Kholod - 9.5 years. Ex-fighters Borys Hulchuk, Maksym Hlyebov, Mykyta Kust received 9 years in prison each, Anatolii Plamadyala - 8 years in prison. Yurii Shevchenko, Roman Ivash, Andrii Demchuk and Mykyta Svyrydovsky were sentenced to 5 years in prison with a probationary period of 3 and 2 years.

Since the accused Shevchenko admitted guilt, information was spread that his accomplices broke his leg in the pre-trial detention center, but they claimed that he simply slipped on the wet stairs. Each of the convicts was charged 7,750 hryvnia in court costs, and all of them were stripped of their police ranks.

Riots in the pre-trial detention center

On August 9, 2017, convicted ex-fighters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs company “Tornado” staged a riot in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center, refusing to obey law enforcement officers who came to check the cell where Tornado members terrorized other prisoners, extorting money and food from them. Ropes, hooks and other escape devices were found in their cell.

The investigation into this case established that “an organized group of prisoners of former employees of the Tornado company, with the complicity of employees of the Kyiv Pretrial Detention Center, committed serious and especially serious crimes, which resulted in mass riots, which were accompanied by arson, seizure of buildings, resistance to government officials using weapons and other objects used as weapons; resisting law enforcement officers in the performance of their official duties; making threats to kill, violence against law enforcement officers in connection with the performance of their official duties, as well as storing explosive devices without permission provided by law”.

Based on the results of the pre-trial investigation, the ex-commander of the Tornado company Onyshchenko and 3 of his former soldiers were suspected of committing crimes under Art. 294, part 1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (mass riots), art. 342, part 2 (resistance to a law enforcement officer), Art. 345, part 4 (threat or violence against a law enforcement officer), Art. 348 (attack on the life of a law enforcement officer), Art. 263, part 1 (illegal handling of weapons). Another 4 accomplices of the riot were suspected of violating articles providing for liability for mass riots and resistance to a law enforcement officer.

Nature of the illegal activity

One of the “Tornadovites”, under the threat of murder, forced the detainee to suck and lick a plastic tube, imitating the physiological characteristics of oral intercourse. Another was forced to perform similar actions under the threat of a stun gun. Many prisoners were forced to rape each other anally and orally, recording these scenes on video.

Reactions

As stated by the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatolii Matios, the bandits from Tornado carried out torture in a particularly perverted form. For example, they raped a man who was chained to a sports equipment in a Ukrainian school in the city of Perevalsk and raped in an unnatural way, after which he was killed.

Chornovol added that People's Deputy Semen Semenchenko "knows about all the nightmares and still supports the suspects". Earlier, Semenchenko on the air of "Voice of the Capital" expressed bewilderment on what basis the Tornado fighters were detained. Semenchenko also added that throwing tires and stones is not pressure on the court.

“The trial of the fighters of the nationalist Tornado battalion is a trial of criminals, not of patriots,” said Deputy Minister for ATO Affairs Georgiy Tuka.

“The trial of the battalion soldiers... casts a shadow on the entire volunteer movement, which personifies the very rise of patriotism in the country, and this is a very painful fact. On the one hand, it was the volunteer battalions who held the collapsing country together with their own blood, going to fight in the ATO zone with the outbreak of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine in March 2014. Volunteer fighters enjoy unquestioned authority in society; they are heroes of the modern history of Ukraine. “Tornado” also took part in many bloody battles. And now it seems to many that the authorities are judging the defenders of Ukrainian statehood; this is causing strong protest in society. On the other hand, the fighters of the volunteer company “Tornado” kept the whole region in fear, tormented, tortured, raped local residents - and this is difficult to attribute to the war,” noted the Center for Civil Liberties.

In 2017, the organization “Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights” expressed concern about the tendency to justify serious crimes by Ukrainian forces as a state of war. Thus, those convicted of “Tornado” justified their crimes by the fact that their victims were only “separatists”.

Serving the sentence and subsequent events

The bulk of the defendants in the case have been kept in pre-trial detention since 2015, when the “Savchenko Law” was in force, which allowed one day of pre-trial detention to be counted as two days of serving the sentence. Therefore, the sentences imposed by the Obolonsky court for Kust, Hulchuk, Hlyebov and Plamadyala were served in 2020, but they continued to remain in custody for the case of unrest in the pre-trial detention center. In February-March 2021, in the case of unrest in a pre-trial detention center, their measure of restraint was changed from detention to house arrest. On February 15, Anatolii Plamadyala and Borys Hulchuk were released, after which the first left for Kryvyi Rih, and the second for Poltava. On March 17, the Shevchenko court showed leniency towards Mykyta Kust and Maksym Hlyebov, releasing them under round-the-clock house arrest.

On July 11, 2022, the Shevchenko District Court of Appeal released the ex-commander of the Tornado battalion, Ruslan Onyshchenko, on bail. Soviet-era dissident, People's Deputy of Ukraine Stepan Khmara and his wife Roksolana vouched for him.

According to the BBC, as of April 2023, all “Tornadov” are at large. It is known from court rulings that at least three of those released after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion went to fight. Among them was Daniil Lyashuk, who died in the Bakhmut direction on April 1, 2023.