A Russian contract serviceman of the 247th Air Assault Regiment involved in the execution of Ukrainian soldiers near Ilovaisk in August 2014 has been uncovered after posting his combat award.

The recently published Report of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine (GPU) presented the factors that led to the Ilovaisk tragedy in the summer of 2014 as established by its investigation.

Among other factors, it mentions the direct military invasion of Russian regular troops on August 23-24, 2014, whose combat power far exceeded the Ukrainian military forces. The encirclement of the Ukrainian troops resulted from the deployment of Russian battalion tactical groups towards Ilovaisk. During the telephone conversations on August 26-28, the head of the Anti-Terrorists Operation (ATO) Viktor Muzhenko received guarantees from the Deputy Commander of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolay Bogdanovskiy to provide the ‘green corridor’ for the withdrawal of ATO forces from the encirclement.

However, on August 29, 2014, the Ukrainian soldiers, moving along the route agreed with the Russian command, fell under intense heavy artillery shelling. The events of those days became a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. According to the official data, 366 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, 429 were injured, and 300 soldiers were taken prisoner on those days.

The InformNapalm team identified the units, which directly participated in the attack on the Ukrainian troops near Ilovaisk:

• 6th Tank Brigade (military unit 54096, Nizhny Novgorod, Western Military District), links 1, 2;
• 31st Airborne Assault Brigade (military unit 73612, Ulyanovsk), link;
• 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade (military unit 21005, Yurga, Central Military District), link;
• 8th Mountain Rifle Brigade (military unit 16544, vil. Borzoi, Southern Military District), link;
• 247th Airborne Assault Regiment (military unit 54801, Stavropol, Southern Military District), links 1, 2.

The exclusive research of the InformNapalm international volunteer community collected the photos of Russian paratroopers from Stavropol (247th Air Assault Regiment of 7th Airborne Division). The pictures show the destroyed Ukrainian equipment near Gorbatenko village and a video filmed through the visor of a BMD-2 vehicle.

The video was uploaded to his social profile by Igor Zavalishin, with the title “The tanks are burning”. This video reflects an episode of the march of the paratroopers of the 247th regiment to the Donbas (the video was uploaded on October 26, 2014). It shows the Ukrainian equipment burning, which means that the video was shot when the Ukrainian convoys were trying to withdraw from the Ilovaisk encirclement on August 29, 2014.

Three years later another contractor of the 247th Air Assault Regiment, Ruslan Golyshev from Smolensk (born 21.09.1988, archive of the account), published a photo of his Medal For Courage (decree of the Russian president of October 22, 2014). In addition, Golyshev was awarded a medal for the participation in the Russian-Georgian War of 2008, signed by the commander of military unit 54801.

Neither Golyshev’s album, nor his friend contacts did not explain how he “earned” this award. However, on the page of his OK account (archive of the account, album, friends) Golyshev personally titled the photo: August 29, 2014.

We reminded the readers about the video shot by Golyshev’s comrade-in-arms Igor Zavalishin for a reason. The coincidence of the circumstances in which the video was taken and the date attached to the photo indicates that Golyshev also participated in combat in Ukraine, in particular, in the execution of Ukrainian soldiers near Ilovaisk. This must be the reason why Russian command gave him the award.

Despite the secrecy of the conclusions of the forensic examinations in the GPU report on the Ilovaisk tragedy, the information concerning the facts of the Russian aggression against Ukraine can be found in the databases of our intelligence community.

We remind you that in one of the databases InformNapalm lists the Russian servicemen who received various awards for their participation in the occupation of Ukrainian and Georgian territories, as well as for carrying out the criminal orders of the top Russian military leadership in the Donbas and in Syria. See Award stigma of war criminals from the Russian Army, database and video overview from 10/03/2016, Part II. Updated database and infographic from 07/07/2017. As of July, the database lists 143 orders and medals awarded for military merit, including: 95 awards for war crimes in the Donbas, 16 for the occupation of the Crimea, 5 for the occupation of Georgian territories and 27 for murders in Syria. 

This publication was prepared by Victory Krm specially for InformNapalm.

Translated by Andrii Gryganskyi, edited by Max Alginin

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