Russian convict at front charged with killing six fellow soldiers

Russian convict Alexei Korolyov, sent from a penal colony to fight in Ukraine, has himself ended up in the dock: according to a Russian exile news outlet, he is on trial for killing six fellow soldiers in the Donetsk region. Journalists managed to reconstruct the details of the case months after the first reports.

Korolyov was sent to a penal colony for drug dealing and was due to serve eleven years. But last year he got a chance: he signed up for the Russian army and went to fight. The Ukrainian project “I Want to Live” reported the incident back in February, but there was no independent confirmation at the time. Now journalists have checked the list of alleged victims against the database of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine maintained by Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service: all six were found in it, and they served as scouts in the 27th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade.

What happened near Kupiansk

According to the available information, it all happened in October last year near the village of Pervyi Lyman in the Kupiansk district of the Kharkiv region. It began when scouts of the 27th Brigade mistakenly attacked a quad bike of the 121st Regiment with a drone. On the evening of 24 October, several soldiers came to complain at the reconnaissance company’s command post, beat up the people there and took away drone control equipment.

The next day a new conflict broke out. According to the “I Want to Live” project, one of the soldiers reminded Korolyov of his prison past and began threatening him with sexual violence. He grabbed a weapon and opened fire: six people were left dead and two wounded. These events, it is noted, unfolded during the Russian offensive on Kupiansk, and the presence of both units in the area was confirmed at the time by the US Institute for the Study of War.

Little is officially known about the case. The defendant’s lawyer, Ekaterina Kulikova, confirmed to the outlet that the trial concerns a serviceman: “All hearings are held behind closed doors.” She declined to reveal other details, citing her duty of confidentiality, but did not deny that the case is linked to the killings.

A criminal past and a secret unit

According to the outlet, Korolyov began his criminal career in the early 2000s. An appeal ruling by the Belgorod Regional Court dated 14 August 2024 mentions six previous convictions handed down by Vladimir courts in 2003, 2007 and 2011. He was found guilty of robbery, assault with robbery, theft, fraud and hooliganism.

One of those shot is said to be Rodion Kravtsev. Bank data seen by the journalists indicate that he listed military unit 71330 as his place of service — the FSB’s Centre for Radio-Electronic Intelligence of Communications, known as Centre 16 and among the most secretive units of Russia’s security services. According to the British government, FSB Centre 16 intercepts, decrypts and processes electronic messages, carries out technical penetration of foreign networks and conducts cyber intelligence, and the European Union has previously held it responsible for cyberattacks.

In questionnaires Kravtsev wrote that he began working there in June 2023, but later was listed as a private in a motor rifle brigade that took part in the Kupiansk offensive. Why this happened is unknown. At the same time he was a defendant in a petty theft case — which, in the journalists’ view, may mean his prosecution was suspended or dropped in exchange for service in a combat zone.

Prisoners at war

Russia has been recruiting prisoners for the war in Ukraine since the summer of 2022. As Radio Liberty, for example, has noted, it was started by the Wagner mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Convicts were promised a pardon after six months of service and payments of up to hundreds of thousands of rubles a month, and their families compensation of millions of rubles in the event of death. By the end of 2024, an estimated 140,000 to 180,000 people had been recruited this way.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz