Family of 9 shot dead in house in occupied city in Ukraine

NNine people from a family were shot dead in their home, in a town in eastern Ukraine, controlled by the Russians, on October 27th. Two of the victims are children, aged nine and five.

The complaint was made by Ukrainian authorities, who believe that Russian soldiers killed the entire family because they refused to hand over their home to the occupying forces.

On the Russian side, investigators said that two suspects were arrested for the death of the Kapkanets family. Both countries moved forward with isolated investigations into the incident, as explained by the BBC.

With some photographs being released on social media, with the victims shot, some handcuffed, and blood staining the beds, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, stated that “the bloody hands of the Russians were involved” in the death of the family, in Volnovakha.

“According to preliminary information, the occupiers killed the entire Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give their house to occupiers from Chechnya,” said the commissioner, via Telegram. The same was corroborated by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office in Donetsk.

Russian authorities, on the other hand, pointed out that the detained Russian soldiers were from the “Far East” and that the crime was “a domestic conflict”.

The town of Volnovakha, in the partially occupied region of Donetsk, was captured by the Russians at the beginning of the war, when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Bombings and airstrikes left the village completely destroyed and there are several reports of mass homicides in the region.

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