The Southern District Military Court sentenced a soldier of the 501st Separate Marine Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who was captured at the beginning of the war, to nine years in prison in the case of violence against the civilian population. Mediazona was informed about this by the press service of the court.
According to the case file, Cherednik was found guilty of cruel treatment of the civilian population (Part 1 of Article 356 of the Criminal Code), violent seizure of power (Article 278 of the Criminal Code), murder based on political and national hatred (clause “l” of part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code) and undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code).
The serviceman will spend the first three years of imprisonment in prison, and the remaining term in a maximum security colony. The court registered the case against Cherednik in February 2023. This was the first time a Ukrainian military officer was accused of violence against civilians.
According to investigators, on March 27, 2022, during a patrol in Mariupol, Cherednik detained two civilians, Alexander Piskunov and Sergei Potseluev. He demanded that they “utter a phrase in Ukrainian, firing shots into the air from a machine gun to intimidate them.” We are talking about the word «palyanitsa». Since the detainees were unable to comply with the demand, the man, according to the security forces, shot Piskunov. The second civilian remained alive and passed on information about what happened to Russian law enforcement.
As “Grati” writes, there are three victims in the case against Cherednik — Piskunov’s mother Svetlana Semykina, his grandmother Alexandra Klimenko and Sergei Potseluev. The prosecution interviewed three witnesses who claimed to have seen the murder from the window.
Several videos were shown in court where Cherednik spoke on camera about the murder. In a video published earlier in the newspaper “Newspaper | Our DONBASS,” the man explained that, using the skill of pronunciation of the Ukrainian word, he wanted to determine which side a person belongs to. Piskunov, the Ukrainian claimed in the video, answered all his questions, but then flinched, causing Cherednik to shoot him.
During the hearings, a Marine soldier explained that he found Piskunov’s movements suspicious because he jerked as if he wanted to pull out a weapon. In addition, in court Cherednik denied the request to pronounce the word “palyanitsa”. “The investigation needed this in order to falsify the motive of national hatred in Cherednik’s actions,” the publication “Grati” conveyed the defense’s position.
According to Potseluev, Cherednik asked the meaning of the word “palyanitsa”, and did not ask him to repeat it. Piskunov, according to the man, could not answer, but he said that it was bread, so he was released. From Potseluev’s story it follows that he later returned to the scene of the murder and buried Piskunov nearby. He recognized the killer in Cherednik by his “round face, thick eyebrows, absent-minded gaze,” dark gray hair and two-meter height.
In June of this year, the same court sentenced the Ukrainian military man Denis Muryga to 16 years in prison on charges of undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code) and participation in an armed formation for purposes contrary to the interests of Russia ( Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code).