Kukurika Vitaliy Leonidovich (Kukurika Vitaliy Leonidovich)

In the occupied Donetsk region, no later than April 2022, Ukrainian citizens, servicemen of the howitzer artillery division of the special purpose regiment 'Azov' of the National Guard of Ukraine, 32-year-old Rustam Gochaliyev and 35-year-old Vitaliy Kukurika, fell into the hands of Russian military personnel." 1. They were accused of cruel treatment of the civilian population in the occupied territory. According to the Russian investigation, on 9 May 2017, servicemen arrived in KRAZ vehicles in the area of the village of Lebedinskoye on the orders of their superiors. In the morning, while on combat positions, Gochaliyev and Kukurika, together with their comrades, using the BS-3 artillery gun of the 1944 model, carried out targeted shelling of residential objects of civilian infrastructure with fragmentation-high-explosive shells. It is claimed that the artillery attack began at the moment when students lined up near the local school for the subsequent laying of flowers at the memorial of military glory. During the shelling, 6 teachers and 56 students managed to take shelter in the basement of the educational institution in time, thanks to which no one was injured. As a result of the explosions, eight residential buildings and three social facilities, including a school, were damaged. No later than December 26, 2023, the Supreme Court of the Donetsk People's Republic found the defendants guilty and sentenced Rustam Gochaliyev and Vitaly Kukurik to 15 years of imprisonment in a strict regime colony. There is no information about appealing the verdict.