Ukrainian prosecutors have identified the Russian officer who, according to investigators, gave the criminal order to shell residential houses in the Kharkiv region. Sergei Maksimov, commander of the 138th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 6th combined arms army of the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces, is suspected of killing civilians, according to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova.
«Prosecutors of the Kharkiv regional prosecutor's office and SBU investigators have established that on March 26, this Russian commander ordered his subordinates to use the TOS-1 Buratino heavy flamethrower system on the residential areas in Malaya Rogan and Olkhovka,» she stated.
According to the investigators, Maksimov »was fully aware there were no military targets there». Moreover, «the use of such weapons in places of concentration of civilian populationis prohibited by international law.»
Not only residential houses were hit by the shelling, the lyceum and the milk factory in Malaya Rogan were also damaged. As a result of the artillery strike, a 13-year-old girl was injured. A few days later she died in hospital.
Colonel Maksimov was born in Uzhgorod in Ukraine, Venediktova said.