Court sentences Russian commander who staged execution of Ukrainian officer's mother
A court in Sumy Oblast has sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison a Russian "commandant of Boromlia" who in 2022 staged the mock execution of a civilian woman – the mother of a Ukrainian serviceman.
Source: the project The Book of the Executioners of the Ukrainian People, citing the verdict of the Trostianets District Court of Sumy Oblast
Details: According to the project's investigators, Mykhailo Bakhmanov, 43, a native of Donetsk, voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. At the time of the crime, he served as commander of a rifle battalion of a mobilisation reserve regiment within the 1st Army Corps of the 8th Army of the Russian Armed Forces. To local residents he introduced himself using the alias Medved ("Bear") and referred to himself as the "commandant of the village".
Investigators were able to identify him in part thanks to photographs taken on a mobile phone stolen from a local resident, which were automatically uploaded to the owner's cloud account.
On 19 March 2022, at about 10:00, Bakhmanov arrived with a group of armed Russian soldiers at a house in Boromlia, where an elderly woman lived with her husband and their underage grandson. The soldiers were searching for her son – a Ukrainian officer and ATO veteran, whom Medved threatened to stab to death if he found him. [The ATO or Anti-Terrorist Operation is a term used from 2014 to 2018 by the media, the government of Ukraine and the OSCE to identify combat actions in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts against Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists – ed.]
The Russians behaved aggressively, threatened to kill everyone and blow up the house, and even fired shots into a well, suspecting that the woman's son might be hiding there.
During the search, Medved ordered the woman to hand over all mobile phones. Fearing for her life, she complied and gave them two phones – a Bravis C281 Wide and a Samsung GT-E1200i, with SIM cards worth UAH 562 in total (about US$13). The phones were never returned, leaving the family temporarily without communication.
When the soldiers failed to find the serviceman or obtain information about his whereabouts, they threatened to take the woman's underage grandson with them. She asked them to take her instead.
The Russians then drove the woman to a pond on the outskirts of the village towards Sumy. There, Medved ordered her to walk towards a hole in the ice, while he and another soldier followed behind with weapons aimed at her. She was again threatened with death if she did not reveal where her son was hiding. When she replied that she did not know, she was forced to kneel facing the ice hole. Three shots were fired. The woman said she did not see who fired them because she was standing with her back turned, but she perceived the incident as a real execution.
Both the victim and her grandson independently identified Medved in photographs. Two other local residents and a firefighter who had personally spoken with the commander also recognised him from photos. A ballistic examination confirmed that the shell casings found by the victim at the scene were live 5.45 mm rounds for Kalashnikov rifles. Intelligence data also confirmed that this officer commanded the battalion stationed in the area.
After reviewing the evidence, on 5 March 2026 the court found Bakhmanov guilty of committing a criminal offence under Article 28.2 and Article 438.1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – cruel treatment of civilians and other violations of the laws and customs of war committed by a group of persons acting in prior conspiracy – and sentenced him to 10 years' imprisonment.
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