Whoever was shocked by the murder of a three-year-old child in Kiev probably thought about the identity of the monster who did it. Thinking about it, one remembers the murder of the Bla-bla-car driver and Lvov resident Taras Pozdnyakov, killed by the same creatures. And remembering this, one guesses that it is not an ordinary crime.
The absence of active hostilities in the OUF (ATO) zone has led to the formation of an ominous hub, which is worth describing in detail.
Who the sniper was aiming at
The child was killed by veterans of the ATO – Andrey Lavrega (18 years old) and Evegeny Semenov (19 years old). Both were a part of the Maidan self-defence, then in the ATO. Both recently returned to Kiev. Former volunteers/militants are caught up in crime often. They always have a “support group”, including a whole army of “sworn brothers”, volunteers, simple sympathisers, and in the end the whitewashing comes from the official authorities. But the case was so shocking that even their immediate frontline commander refused to defend the two “assassins”. The murder was classic, contracted, and commercial. The media did not even think about another narrative than the one given to journalists by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs: the “client” of the sniper was a deputy and a merchant, and his three-year-old son became an accidental victim. This narrative was indirectly confirmed by information that the detainee confessed to everything, saying that he missed due to not taking into account compensation for the movement of the car. Also the character of the wound – the fact that it was in the neck – speaks about the “accidental” nature of hitting the son of the targeted businessman.
Absolutely all media outlets wrote that concerning the boy “there was not enough time to drive to the hospital”. The picture was quite clear: the sniper watched the “client”, shot, missed, hit the child, the boy was still alive, he was taken to the hospital, but didn’t make it. Everyone thought so until December 4th. But on the day the court chose the measure of restraint for the suspect, the parents of the murdered child told a very different story. According to the mother, the bullet did not hit the neck. “I understood that he’d been shot. I told my husband to go faster. I saw that he was still alive. And then I turned around, I saw my baby missing half his head. And I collected his brains with my own hands,” said the woman.
These words negate the version of an accidental hit, that the killer fired while the car was in motion and did not make an adjustment for it. At the same time, media reports of a wound in the neck and that the child was alive and there simply wasn’t enough time to take him to the hospital turn out to be false. Those words destroy everything we knew about the contract killings in Ukraine so far. It is clear that the sniper from the ATO, a “warrior of light”, a medal-bearer, and a “fighter for Ukraine’s freedom” shot not at the deputy/businessman Sobolev. He shot his son.
Dotting the “i”
The court qualified the actions of the direct perpetrator of the assassination of Andrey Lavrega under paragraphs 2, 11, 12 of article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (premeditated murder of a young child committed on order). This concerns precisely the child, because paragraph 2 of article 115 specifies that the aggravating circumstance is the murder of a pregnant woman or a minor. The court’s version coincides with the conclusions made above. Thus, in the conclusions about the crime, the opinion of the Ukrainian media and “support groups” differed. The press, although publishing the court decision, continues to insist publicly that the veteran ATO sniper Lavrega aimed at the father of the deceased child, not the child himself. As for the part of society that is known to be on the side of the killer, their opinion is not to be taken into account. “Shooting separatists and Russkies. It happens,” wrote a certain Andrey Semenov, expressing the point of view of a part of Ukrainian society.
The court will decide the final qualification for those who committed the crime. Having faith in Ukrainian justice is a fool’s errand. Oles Buzina‘s killers are at large. The killer Sternenko, who stabbed a man in broad daylight, entered the diplomatic academy and proudly publishes selfies from the former Kiev Higher Party School. Such killers being sentenced is rare. However, there are positives. On May 28th 2019 the Kiev-Svatoshinsky court handed down a life sentenced to the “Right Sector” militant Dmitry Golub, the killer of the Bla-bla-car driver Taras Pozdnyakov. But the main suspect, Luan Kingisepp, a Russian citizen who was wanted there, died during the assembly of explosive devices on Nauky Avenue in Kiev.
There should be no doubt about the nature and motives of these people. And that means the sniper couldn’t have targeted the father but hit his son. The sniper aimed at the child. But why? The cold logic of the killers, whose blood runs cold, says that the orderers needed the father of the child alive. Via the murder of his son, the father was informed about the seriousness of his intentions and reminded that he has a 10-year-old daughter, who, if the demands are not met, awaits the same fate as her younger brother. The sniper Lavrega aimed at the child, because if he had aimed at his father, he would have hit his father. Vyacheslav Sobolev knows this, so he asked the veteran/monster at the court hearing on Wednesday: “I only have one question: if you saw that I got in the car with two children, you were ordered to shoot me, so shoot me!” There was no answer. Andrey Lavrega sat idly, staring into space.
Special contingent
In 2015 the active phase of the war in Donbass ended with the Minsk Agreements. At that time, the Ukrainian army effectively ceased to exist and could not wage war. No one – neither Poroshenko, nor Parubiy, nor Turchynov – hid that they were not going to observe anything signed. And a “strange war” began, which is still ongoing. To date, reminders about it come only through reports of exchanges of fire, shelling, and deaths in the Ukrainian press: the Ukrainian authorities still use the undeclared war for propaganda purposes and resist its cessation in every way. They need war, for it will be the end for them without it and they will have to answer for everything.
But this is politics. And here for the young people who were on Maidan, then went to the ATO, survived, and joined the “volunteer battalions”, there was a mentally irreversible transformation. The example of two killers of a child is the most vivid and exemplary. Euromaidan destroyed their psyche at the most dangerous transitional age, then brought to the surface all the worst in them and gave these demons a weapon. There’s no way back.
Until 2019 Lavrega and Semenov stayed in Donbass. Their lives there would have been very boring had it not been for the kind of activity that brightens up grey everyday life. They’re essentially not soldiers there – they’re bounty hunters. They go out to the grey zone every day and start hunting people. This is where the headlines about the latest Ukrainians who died in Donbass come from. Such is how Vasily Slipak, the “singer” of large and small theatres, died. And so Denis Volochayev, buried on December 4th in Kiev, was awarded the Hero of Ukraine title by Zelensky. His comrade Dmitry Kaplunov, who was with him in a sniper pair, remained lying in the grey zone and is currently in the morgue of Donetsk.
This daily hunt has no sense or purpose. Before the “revolution”, the word “hunter” was also reserved for volunteers who were called to go to the rear of the enemy for a dangerous mission. So all the aforementioned characters are “hunters” in every sense. This hunt constitutes their daily work, which they are accustomed to and without it they are unlikely to be able to live. Someone who got a taste and saw a calling in this hunt will never be a man – this is a dangerous special contingent. Ironically, they are most dangerous not for imaginary “enemies”, but for those who praise their heroism and are proud of them. They’re coming home… And they’ll go hunting again and again. These are serial killers. Psychiatrists qualify their motives as “dependent behaviour syndrome”.
Epilogue
Returning to the story with the son of deputy Sobolev – in society, which was not touched by the infernal flames of war, a question arises: who could do such a thing? How can someone target a child? The answer is simple: only a sniper with the experience of “strange war” in Donbass could do such a thing without shaking. Andrey Lavrega is a special contingent of “hunters”. 30 years ago no young man in the Soviet Ukraine was capable of such a thing. But now the managed degradation of an entire nation has achieved its goal. Those who are capable of killing children become more and more. There is no way out, because the oligarch-controlled “party of war” and the media continue to carry out war propaganda, glorifying monsters, serial killers, and murderers of children. The lawyer Andrey Portnov noted what “Channel 24”, belonging to the Mayor of Lvov Sadovy, said in a report about the murder of the three-year-old son Vyacheslav Sobolev:
“The TV channel characterised the child’s murderer as follows: 20-year-old hero of the war against Russia; volunteer; Knight of the Order for Courage; former sniper of a Ukrainian voluntary army; went to the frontline to defend Ukraine at 16; a real sniper-professional; distinguished himself by daring attacks against the rear of the enemy; received a well deserved Order from Poroshenko’s hands; the number of fighters killed by him is not disclosed, but it is assured that his has few competitors in this; one of the best military snipers; because of the war with Russia, we got a grown man trained to kill; skilful sniper with a state award; a young guy who came with a burning desire to defend his country. The TV channel, of course, did not express condolences to the family of the deceased child.”
Ukraine fell below the level of the 1990s. It plunges lower and lower because it does not want to stop the war, putting itself in maximum dependence on this drug. But the monstrous creatures of the hell of war have already come to the streets of Ukrainian cities. And they’ll never stop.
Maksim Maksimov
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