Murder of a captain in Hola Prystan: Russian soldier sentenced to life imprisonment
A Russian Armed Forces serviceman has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the captain of a civilian vessel in the temporarily occupied town of Hola Prystan.
According to the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office, he was found guilty of violating the laws and customs of war, combined with intentional murder under Part 2 of Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The first-instance court handed down the verdict on 13 March 2026.
Prosecutors proved in court that on the evening of 1 November 2022, the convicted Russian soldier was on the waterfront in Hola Prystan, where he shot and killed the captain of the RBT-1 ‘Rydsa’ tugboat with an automatic weapon.
On that day, the civilian vessel was on a scheduled voyage, transporting passengers from Kherson to Hola Prystan. As the crew began to moor at the pier, the Russian soldier opened fire at the people.
The tugboat’s captain sustained a gunshot wound to the head and died at the scene. According to the prosecutor’s office, the other passengers on board were unharmed.
The office also stated that following the killing, the occupiers attempted to cover up the crime and spread false claims that the tugboat had allegedly been fired upon by Ukrainian military personnel.
A special pre-trial investigation into this case was conducted by investigators from the Main Directorate of the National Police in the Kherson region.
Operational support was provided by the counter-intelligence unit of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Kherson region and the regional cybercrime unit of the National Police’s Cybercrime Department.
Oleksiy Butenko, Head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Conditions of Armed Conflict at the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office, stated that the deliberate killing of unarmed civilians constitutes a gross violation of the laws and customs of war.
According to him, despite the temporary occupation and active hostilities in the Kherson region, law enforcement officers are documenting every war crime committed by representatives of the aggressor state and are making every effort to identify all those involved – from the direct perpetrators to their commanders.
Butenko also noted that since the start of the full-scale invasion, 29 Russian servicemen and accomplices of the aggressor country have already been convicted in the Kherson region for violations of the laws and customs of war. According to him, efforts to bring those responsible to justice are ongoing.
