Finland to try Russian neo-Nazi Rusich mercenary for war crimes in Ukraine
Finland’s Deputy Prosecutor General Jukka Rappe announced on 31 October that Yan Petrovsky, a Russian neo-Nazi and the co-founder of the notorious Rusich ‘sabotage-assault reconnaissance group’ is to go on trial in Finland on war crimes charges. His trial is due to begin at the beginning of December 2024, almost exactly a year after the Finish Supreme Court ruled that Petrovsky, who now uses the name Voislav Torden, could not be extradited to Ukraine due to the unsatisfactory conditions in Ukrainian penitentiary institutions
Petrovsky / Torden is to face several counts of war crimes in Luhansk oblast, with the trial to take place from December 2024 to January 2024 at the Helsinki District Court. Petrovsky is accused as the deputy commander of the openly far-right and neo-Nazi Rusich unit which fought for Russia and its proxy ‘Luhansk people’s republic. Petrovsky and other Rusich members are accused of having killed 22 Ukrainian soldiers and wounded four others.
Petrovsky co-founded Rusich together with neo-Nazi sadist Alexei Milchakov. The latter has consistently boasted of his Nazi views, and has never hidden the fact that he, and his men, were decked out in Moscow and were paid to kill Ukrainians.
This is the first time that Finland is to prosecute for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Petrovsky is charged with actions which infringe the norms of warfare with respect to methods and treatment of wounded and slain Ukrainian soldiers. It remains to be seen what specific crimes make up the indictment, but Rappe has said that the trial will consider video footage from events in Ukraine and the witness testimony of survivors.
On 5 September 2014, Rusich fighters ambushed and killed a column of Ukrainian Aidar Volunteer Battalion fighters near Metallist. They are believed to have beaten and tortured those who had survived the original shootout, with none left alive. Milchakov and Petrovsky then photographed themselves against the men’s mutilated bodies. Milchakov was seen cutting off the ear of one of their victims. The videos have all been removed from YouTube due to their shocking content, however copies will almost certainly have been cached and documented. There are also plenty of interviews in which the men admitted to the actions..
Milchakov first gained notoriety in his native St Petersburg for beheading a puppy on video and calling on fellow neo-Nazis to kill down-and-outs. This was all forgotten by the Russian authorities after he and Petrovsky proved so ‘useful’ in killing Ukrainians. In March 2015 both Petrovsky and Milchakov were part of a militant ‘delegation’ to a forum in St. Petersburg of members of mainly European and Russian far-right and neo-Nazi parties. In September that year and the following year, they were brought in as ‘instructors’ at a camp under the patronage of the former ‘prime minister of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’, another Russian with far-right views and now Russian MP, Alexander Borodai. The training camp was for fighters from ‘Rusich’ and an organization called the E.N.O.T Corporation, and was one of the ever-mounting number of such events where even very young teenagers are taught how to shoot and kill, all for ‘the glory of Russia’.
Rusich is believed to have been deployed in Kharkiv oblast following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the unit was the first on 12 April 2023 to post a horrific video, apparently showing the beheading of a Ukrainian prisoner of war. The caption said that “you’ll be surprised at how many such videos will gradually come to light”. Both Rusich and its co-founders were placed under US and EU sanctions in 2022. This may be the reason why, when Petrovsky was detained by Finnish border guards on 20 July 2023, he was travelling under the name Voislav Torden. Petrovsky claims to be a great ‘Russian patriot’, yet appears to have long lived outside Russia. He was in Norway for a very long and, according to the St Petersburg newspaper Fontanka made a living in Oslo as a tattooer. He was also an active participant in the Norwegian far-right movement, and was detained in 2016 by the Norwegian authorities “for reasons of national security”. It was not clear then whether Ukraine had formally requested his extradition, and at that stage he was simply deported back to Russia. Judging by a Fontanka report from June 2022, he was in Russia at the funeral of a Russian killed fighting in Ukraine.