During an assault on Ukrainian positions, a Russian soldier executed a Ukrainian serviceman. In the heat and chaos of battle, this incident could have easily remained unnoticed, as there was no video recording. However, a few hours later, the Ukrainians regained control of the position. The soldiers who came as reinforcement noticed that the body of their fellow serviceman was lying face down near the dugout, unarmed. And then Ukrainian investigators took over the matter of establishing the truth.
The location of our story is the Zaporizhzhia region, in southern Ukraine, where fighting between the Ukrainian and Russian armies has been ongoing since February 2022. The Vovk position near the village of Novodarivka changed hands several times. On 6 January 2024, it was held by Ukrainian soldiers from the 226th Battalion of the 127th Separate Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The morning was foggy and gloomy – perfect conditions for an assault. A group of Russians from the Storm-V unit of the 218th Tank Regiment of the 127th Motorised Rifle Division of the 5th Army launched an assault at around 5 a.m. There were 18 soldiers in the assault group, accompanied by a tank. The Russians divided into three groups of six soldiers each. Five Ukrainian soldiers were holding the Vovk position. Due to weather conditions, they have no support from the air. None of the defenders survived. But when the fog lifted, the 226th Battalion brought in reinforcements and regained the position. The surviving Russians surrendered.
Discovering Hodniuk’s body
The executed Ukrainian soldier was named Vitaliy Hodniuk. His call sign in the army was ‘Penguin.’ Vitaliy had just turned 41. He was from the Chernivtsi region. He was a military from 2015 to 2020 and rejoined the army after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. He was skilled at crafting and repairing, valuable skills in wartime. His fellow soldiers knew that Hodniuk would not abandon his position. He was eventually buried in his native village of Ataky, near Khotyn, on 1 May 2024.
Oleksandr Deynezhenko, call sign ‘Baha,’ was a junior sergeant in the same battalion as Hodniuk. He was in the assault group that was sent to regain the Vovk position, and he filmed what he saw at the position. Baha recounted discovering Hodniuk’s body. He found him lying near the dugout without his weapon. His body wasn’t in a typical combat position. It looked more like Hodniuk had left the dugout, surrendered, and knelt. Baha said he noticed a wound below the back of the head and a face covered in blood. There were also bullet wounds on the chest, above the bulletproof vest.
Guilty and innocent at the same time
The accused is a 27-year-old Russian named Dmitriy Kurashov, call sign ‘Stalker.’ A stalker is the name given to people who venture into abandoned or dangerous locations, explore them and serve as guides to other people who want to cross these restricted areas.
Kurashov described himself as “an institution kid”. He grew up without parents, in an orphanage in the town of Gremyachinsk in the Perm region of Russia. Google Maps does not show many photos of Gremyachinsk. Gloomy landscapes, shabby houses, and beautiful trees covered with snow. The reality of children’s institutions in Russia looks just as bleak. Kurashov ended up serving time in prison as a teenager after getting into a fight with a law enforcement officer. After his release, he found himself on the streets. He went back to prison after a robbery. He said he went to fight in Ukraine to “start a new page in his life”.
Kurashov lost his left eye to a grenade explosion during combat. In a video of the 226th Battalion with Russian prisoners after that battle, he is already wearing a bandage on his head. He said that he will “have his eye replaced after returning to Russia”. He has not the slightest doubt that he will be exchanged after the verdict. He pleaded guilty for this reason, although he continued to consider himself “innocent” at the same time.
Russian prisoners turned witnesses
The first interrogation of Kurashov in captivity, filmed on video, was conducted by Roman Shyshko. Shyshko is the second-in-command of the 226th Battalion. The Ukrainians knew that the Russians had launched an assault, he testified, but no one understood how many soldiers were involved or what was happening. When the fog lifted and a drone was able to take off, the command post saw that the position had been taken over. The 226th Battalion sent in reserves, regained the position, and captured prisoners. Out of the 18 Russians who had taken over the Vovk position, eight were captured by the Ukrainian army, ten were killed in battle.
It was the Russian soldiers who were captured along with Kurashov – his ‘brothers in arms’ – who testified against him. There are three Russian witnesses, all aged over 40: Dmitriy Zuev, Oleg Zamyatin, and Konstantin Zelenin. The latter was the commander of Kurashov’s assault group, which carried out the mission that day. When the witnesses recounted their version of events at the Vovk position, a distinctive whistling sound could be heard. It is the sound made by people who are missing some of their teeth. Investigators working on cases of Russian war crimes say that a significant percentage of prisoners are former inmates who were released after signing a contract with the Russian army. They are often men with no higher education or even a full secondary education, and many are recurring offenders in the Russian prison system. The missing teeth are perhaps the least of these recruits’ problems.
Kurashov and other Russians from his unit were part of Storm-V, a unit which consisted almost entirely of former prisoners. While contract soldiers in the Russian army are promised substantial bonuses, prisoners are recruited into the army by promises of freedom. After signing the contract, they are quickly sent to training camps and, after a short course, immediately thrown into battle.
This was the case with Kurashov and his fellow soldiers. They underwent three weeks of training in the occupied Ukrainian territory near Berdiansk, and then went into battle. “We were told to foam it,” said one of the witnesses in an interview with Ukrainian media. In Russian army slang, ‘foam it’ means to throw a grenade into a dugout where enemy infantry is hiding. Such tactics can be part of combat. But the same testimony stated that the Russians also had orders not to take prisoners.
The evidence of an execution
Ukraine’s Security Service investigators have gathered over 2,000 pages of evidence. The body of the deceased was not immediately taken out from the site. Therefore, it was not possible to conduct a thorough forensic examination. But it was determined that the body sustained bullet wounds.
The investigators learned from the witnesses that the accused, Kurashov, used an AK-47 that day, but it was not his weapon. Kurashov and four other Russian soldiers went through polygraph questioning. During the interrogation, Kurashov disagreed with the charges and told his version of events. However, the expert’s interpretation of the data states that Kurashov’s physiological reactions indicate that he possesses hidden information about the murder he is accused of.
Witness testimony is the only compelling evidence in this case. All three Russians from Kurashov’s unit say the same thing: ‘Stalker’ shouted for the Ukrainian in the dugout to surrender. The latter came out with his hands up, threw his weapon on the ground, knelt down, and Kurashov fired a round of automatic gunfire at him. The investigation believes that Hodniuk sustained at least three bullet wounds.
Kurashov’s version
Kurashov did not admit guilt during the pre-trial investigation. His strategy changed during the trial – he pleaded guilty in order to get sentenced quickly and to be exchanged but he continued to insist on his version of events. He claimed that both Ukrainian soldiers from the dugout, not only Hodniuk but also another fighter, were allegedly executed by another Russian soldier who later died in battle.
The investigation checked this version and found that the soldier, a medic in the Russian unit, had indeed participated in battle, but had been attacking the position from the other flank. Witnesses did not see him near the dugout where the alleged murder took place. Kurashov insisted that other soldiers did not notice the medic in the heat of battle and decided to accuse him, allegedly conspiring out of personal dislike.
The testimony provided by enemy soldiers in captivity should indeed be considered with caution, as it is not always possible to verify people’s motives for testifying. Each of the Russians was interrogated up to ten times. Over time, their stories would get corrected and changed, but still came together into a coherent picture of events.
Kurashov has been on trial in the Zavodskyi District Court of Zaporizhzhia since last autumn. He complained about the slow pace and he mainly remained silent during the hearings. Occasionally, he irritably threw out comments from the glass dock. A few months ago, Kurashov was transferred to a pre-trial detention centre in Dnipro after a Russian air strike on the Bilenka correctional facility. He then had to be transported from afar to attend the hearings. During the closing arguments, he declined to make a final statement. And finally, the court found the Russian man guilty. Life imprisonment – the maximum possible sentence – was the verdict announced to Kurashov on 6 November 2025. And the Russian soldier still hopes to be exchanged.
This report was produced thanks to a grant by Fondation Hirondelle/Justice Info. A full version of this article was published on November 8, 2025, in "Hromadske Radio".
