A Russian far-right militant has been given a life sentence for committing war crimes in Ukraine following a trial in Finland.
A court in Helsinki found that Voislav Torden, a 38-year-old formerly known as Yan Petrovsky, was linked to the deaths of 22 Ukrainian soldiers during his time fighting for a pro-Russian paramilitary group in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
He was found guilty of four charges of war crimes and not guilty of one other, Finnish state broadcaster YLE reported.
His life sentence means he faces around 15 years behind bars but his lawyer said that Torden, who denies all the charges, would appeal the verdict.
Russian-backed separatists rose up in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces over a decade ago, seizing land from the central government in Kyiv and laying the ground for Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Torden, a Russian citizen, was a senior figure in the extreme ultranationalist Rusich paramilitary group—a unit sometimes described as neo-Nazi—with has links to the better-known Wagner mercenaries, according to the RFE/RL news site.
Finnish prosecutors accused Torden of violating the laws of war and committing acts of cruelty against both injured and deceased enemy combatants.
Prosecutors said that the Rusich group, under Torden’s command, slaughtered 22 Ukrainian troops and injured four others on 5 September 2014. The court found that he had participated in the killing of one soldier and shared degrading pictures of the deceased, declaring online that Rusich would show no mercy.
RFE/RL reported that photos posted on social media at the time showed that some of the troops had been executed and that one had the Rusich group’s symbol carved into his face.
Torden, who spent much of his life in Norway, was arrested at an airport in Finland in 2023. Ukraine requested his extradition but a Finnish court refused, citing fears about the condition of prisons and the risk of the suspect being humiliated.
It is the first time that charges relating to allegations of war crimes in Ukraine have been heard in Finland. The case could be heard in Helsinki because the crimes involved are governed by international treaties that the Finnish authorities have signed up to, YLE reported.
