A Finnish district court announced today that it has found a Russian guilty of committing war crimes in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. and sentenced him to life in prison, Reuters reported.
The case of Jan Petrovsky, also known as Vojislav Torden, was an unusual one in which prosecutors outside Ukraine brought a case on behalf of victims of alleged war crimes in a conflict that began long before Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Petrovsky, born in 1987, was charged with five counts related to his activities in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.
Petrovsky, who was sanctioned by the EU and the United States in 2022, denies all charges, his lawyer Heikki Lampella told the court in December.
Petrovsky was detained by Finnish border guards on July 20, 2023, TASS recalled. Ukraine had requested his extradition on charges of crimes it claims he committed in Donbas. The Russian Embassy in Finland said that Russian diplomats are closely monitoring the situation and are ready to continue to defend Petrovsky's rights.