Russia executes two Ukrainian boys after months of torture
Both were just 16.
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Mykyta Khanganov was supposed to turn 17 today.
Instead, he and his classmate, Tihran Ohannisian, are dead.
The Russians executed them yesterday. We know this because the Russian occupational authorities of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region posted on Telegram to brag to the world that they had murdered them. The Berdyansk resistance army also confirmed that the two Ukrainian boys are dead.
Originally arrested in the fall, Mykyta and Tihran were charged with planning to sabotage the railway in Zaporizhzhia. On Sept. 30, about 20 soldiers in Russian uniforms picked up Tihran in the middle of the night, beating him and his grandmother with the butts of their machine guns.
“The military took away computers, laptops, a child’s tablet, phones and food,” Oksana Starovyerova, Tihran’s mother, told the Kyiv-based Media Initiative for Human Rights. “And what was not stolen was broken.” They led Tihran away with a bag over his head.
After five days of torture, the Russians released Tihran and put him under house arrest.
“[My] son was tortured with electric shock, taken to a field [where the Russians] simulated shooting him,” Tihran’s mother said. “The Russians asked him: ‘So you decided to be a partisan?’ And they ordered him to say goodbye to life.”
Mykyta had avoided arrest at first but was later forced to report to investigators daily. Both boys were charged under the Russian criminal code, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years for their supposed crimes. The European parliament demanded on June 15 that all charges against the boys be dropped.
No one thought it would come to this.
“We assume that the kids will soon be arrested and placed on a show trial, which is planned to be organized by the Russian authorities seconded to Berdyansk,” the Media Initiative for Human Rights wrote on June 9. The indictment, the group said in May, was preceded by “several months of bullying, detention and torture of the children and their families.”
Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian-backed administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, posted yesterday on Telegram that two “pro-Ukrainian terrorists” had been “eliminated.” He claimed these “militants” had opened fire with automatic weapons before being killed.
Several observers, however, including the boys’ parents, think that this scenario has been conjured by the Russians to account for the murder. Tihran’s mother said that just a half an hour before the occupation police called to say the boys were dead, she spoke to her son. He was calm, she said. He and Mykyta were together, talking about how they were going to celebrate Mykyta’s birthday.
Last night, a video of Tihran, handsome, with olive skin — and looking younger than 16 — went online. In it, he holds a machine gun. His other hand is free. Somebody else was shooting the video. Perhaps it was Mykyta. Perhaps it was a Russian soldier. Either way, it allegedly shows Tihran just before his death, breathing heavily and saying, “This is the end for me, guys.”
He then holds up a gloved fist and says with conviction: “Slava Ukraini!”
The Ukrainian government has opened an investigation into the killings.
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Beautiful faces. Sixteen years old. Utterly monstrous.
So damned cruel and heartbreaking !