Early in the morning on January 6, 2024, a unit of Russian fighters left the village of Smile in Ukraine's eastern Zaporizhzhya region to attack a position where Vitaliy Hodnyuk, known by the call sign "Penguin," and his fellow Ukrainian soldiers were stationed.
In the fierce fighting that ensued, the Russian unit managed to temporarily seize the position but was pushed out in a Ukrainian counterattack.
"We got close to them, about 5-7 meters away, and they started shouting that they were surrendering. We allowed them to come out of the dugouts," Oleksandr Denizhenko, a junior sergeant who was part of the Ukrainian assault group, told Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.
It was during this surrender that Denizhenko noticed the bodies of two of his comrades killed in the fighting -- one of whom was Hodnyuk.
"There were no weapons of theirs near them, that's one thing. And they were lying in an unnatural position. For example, others who had been killed in combat were lying with their machine guns, magazines, and gear," Denizhenko said.
Three years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the circumstances surrounding Hodnyuk's killing are at the center of an unprecedented trial currently under way in Ukraine.
Since the February 2022 invasion, Ukrainian prosecutors have established 212 cases in which Russian soldiers are accused of executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. But until now, none of these suspects has faced the charges in person.
Now, Russian soldier Dmitry Kurashov, one of the Russian fighters who surrendered to Denizhenko's battalion on that foggy January morning last year, is on trial in a Ukrainian court in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhya on charges of shooting and killing Hodnyuk as he was surrendering -- in violation of the Geneva Convention on rules on the conduct of combatants in war.
Kurashov, 26, served in a detachment called Storm-V composed of convicts who signed up to fight for the Kremlin in Ukraine in exchange for their release from prison back home. He first denied the charges in court but then pleaded guilty, though he says he did this only to speed up the trial in hopes of being included in a prisoner exchange.
"I didn't do it. This was done by another person who is no longer there. I'm admitting it so it ends. They will convict me, I hope, they will give me a prison sentence, they will send me to a camp, where I can calmly wait for either the end of this war or an exchange," Kurashov testified in court.
Hodnyuk "was killed by two bursts from a machine gun, the first went through his lungs, the second through his body armor," Kurashov added.
"If I had fired, his entire head would have exploded on the left side. I shoot at the head, I don't shoot at the body," he said.
The soldier who Kurashov claims killed Hodnyuk was not serving in his Russian unit at the time of the alleged execution, Ukrainian prosecutors say.
'Take No Prisoners'
Ukrainian prosecutors say there are likely more cases of Russian soldiers executing Ukrainians than those they have managed to establish but evidence is difficult to obtain because access to crime scenes is so limited.
In Kurashov's trial, however, three of his own fellow soldiers -- also in Ukrainian custody after surrendering -- are testifying against him.
One of these witnesses testified he saw Kurashov -- whose call sign is "Stalker" -- shouting to a Ukrainian soldier to come out with his hands up. The Ukrainian soldier did so and then "knelt down and threw away [his] machine gun." Then the shooting started up again, he testified.
"I saw this man who had his hands up, he fell face down, and that's it," Kurashov's fellow soldier testified by video link. "Stalker shot him, because I saw him alone in my field of vision. I didn't see anyone else. No one at all."
This version of the events surrounding Hodnyuk's killing has been corroborated by other witnesses, both in court and in conversations with Crimea.Realities.
Another of Kurashov's fellow Russian soldiers said he was hiding when he saw a Ukrainian soldier come out with his hands raised.
"I heard shots. The body fell. Then I quickly got up and ran to the left dugout, to the first one. I saw the body already lying dead. And on the right side was Kurashov…. He was alone there. There was no one else nearby."
One of Kurashov's fellow soldiers testified that they had been instructed by a superior to "take no prisoners."
Orders From Above
Russia denies its military has committed atrocities in Ukraine, despite mounting evidence.
Taras Semkiv, deputy head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's war crimes department, told Crimea.Realities that authorities have "reasons to believe" that Russian commanders are issuing orders to execute Ukrainian soldiers rather than taking them prisoner across the entire front line.
"We are currently working to identify the people giving such orders," Semkiv said, adding that "this is definitely not about some isolated cases or the excess of individual servicemen."
The numbers, Semkiv says, are rising.
Semkiv says his department established 11 cases of Ukrainian soldiers being executed in 2023. The following year, that number rose to 133.
"This number may actually be much higher," he said. "We are definitely talking about a certain dynamic in executions. These are not individuals who, for some reason, decided to commit a crime, but rather is a corresponding order, a corresponding policy of the Russian Federation not to take Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen prisoner."
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine last month expressed "alarm at a sharp rise in reported executions of Ukrainian soldiers" by the Russian military.
"Since the end of August 2024, the mission recorded 79 such executions in 24 separate incidents," it said in a statement.
Kurashov, meanwhile, is awaiting a verdict in his trial. He faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
Hodonyuk could not be buried for several months after his killing because his body could not be recovered from an active combat zone. His body was eventually interred in May 2024.
The area where he was killed is currently under Russian occupation.
